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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/5359.txt b/5359.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2ced982 --- /dev/null +++ b/5359.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2913 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Inside of the Cup, Volume 4, by Winston Churchill + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Inside of the Cup, Volume 4 + +Author: Winston Churchill + +Release Date: October 17, 2004 [EBook #5359] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDE OF THE CUP, VOLUME 4 *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +THE INSIDE OF THE CUP + +By Winston Churchill + + + +Volume 4. + +XIII. WINTERBOURNE +XIV. A SATURDAY AFTERNOON +XV. THE CRUCIBLE +XVI. AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +WINTERBOURNE + + +I + +Hodder fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, awaking during the night at +occasional intervals to recall chimerical dreams in which the events of +the day before were reflected, but caricatured and distorted. Alison +Parr was talking to the woman in the flat, and both were changed, and yet +he identified both: and on another occasion he saw a familiar figure +surrounded by romping, ragged children--a figure which turned out to be +Eldon Parr's! + +Finally he was aroused by what seemed a summons from the unknown--the +prolonged morning whistle of the shoe factory. For a while he lay as one +benumbed, and the gradual realization that ensued might be likened to the +straining of stiffened wounds. Little by little he reconstructed, until +the process became unbearable, and then rose from his bed with one object +in mind,--to go to Horace Bentley. At first--he seized upon the excuse +that Mr. Bentley would wish to hear the verdict of Dr. Jarvis, but +immediately abandoned it as dishonest, acknowledging the true reason, +that in all the--world the presence of this one man alone might assuage +in some degree the terror in his soul. For the first time in his life, +since childhood, he knew a sense of utter dependence upon another human +being. He felt no shame, would make no explanation for his early visit. + +He turned up Tower, deliberately avoiding Dalton Street in its lower +part, reached Mr. Bentley's door. The wrinkled, hospitable old darky +actually seemed to radiate something of the personality with which he had +so long been associated, and Hodder was conscious of a surge of relief, +a return of confidence at sight of him. Yes, Mr. Bentley was at home, +in the dining room. The rector said he would wait, and not disturb him. + +"He done tole me to bring you out, sah, if you come," said Sam. + +"He expects me?" exclaimed Hodder, with a shock of surprise. + +"That's what he done tole me, sah, to ax you kindly for to step out when +you come." + +The sun was beginning to penetrate into the little back yard, where the +flowers were still glistening with the drops of their morning bath; and +Mr. Bentley sat by the window reading his newspaper, his spectacles on +his nose, and a great grey cat rubbing herself against his legs. He rose +with alacrity. + +"Good morning, sir," he said, and his welcome implied that early morning +visits were the most common and natural of occurrences. "Sam, a plate +for Mr. Hodder. I was just hoping you would come and tell me what Dr. +Jarvis had said about the case." + +But Hodder was not deceived. He believed that Mr. Bentley understood +perfectly why he had come, and the knowledge of the old gentleman's +comprehension curiously added to his sense of refuge. He found himself +seated once more at the mahogany table, permitting Sam to fill his cup +with coffee. + +"Jarvis has given a favourable report, and he is coming this morning +himself, in an automobile, to take the boy out to the hospital." + +"That is like Jarvis," was Mr. Bentley's comment. "We will go there, +together, after breakfast, if convenient for you," he added. + +"I hoped you would," replied the rector. "And I was going to ask +you a favour. I have a check, given me by a young lady to use at my +discretion, and it occurred to me that Garvin might be willing to accept +some proposal from you." He thought of Nan Ferguson, and of the hope he +lead expressed of finding some one in Dalton Street. + +"I have been considering the matter," Mr. Bentley said. "I have a friend +who lives on the trolley line a little beyond the hospital, a widow. It +is like the country there, you know, and I think Mrs. Bledsoe could be +induced to take the Garvins. And then something can be arranged for him. +I will find an opportunity to speak to him this morning." + +Hodder sipped his coffee, and looked out at the morning-glories opening +to the sun. + +"Mrs. Garvin was alone last night. He had gone out shortly after we +left, and had not waited for the doctor. She was greatly worried." + +Hodder found himself discussing these matters on which, an hour before, +he had feared to permit his mind to dwell. And presently, not without +feeling, but in a manner eliminating all account of his personal +emotions, he was relating that climactic episode of the woman at the +piano. The old gentleman listened intently, and in silence. + +"Yes," he said, when the rector had finished, "that is my observation. +Most of them are driven to the life, and held in it, of course, by a +remorseless civilization. Individuals may be culpable, Mr. Hodder--are +culpable. But we cannot put the whole responsibility on individuals." + +"No," Hodder assented, "I can see that now." He paused a moment, and as +his mind dwelt upon the scene and he saw again the woman standing before +him in bravado, the whole terrible meaning of her life and end flashed +through him as one poignant sensation. Her dauntless determination to +accept the consequence of her acts, her willingness to look her future in +the face, cried out to him in challenge. + +"She refused unconditionally," he said. + +Mr. Bentley seemed to read his thought, divine his appeal. + +"We must wait," he answered. + +"Do you think?--" Hodder began, and stopped abruptly. + +"I remember another case, somewhat similar," said Mr. Bentley. "This +woman, too, had the spirit you describe--we could do nothing with her. +We kept an eye on her--or rather Sally Grover did--she deserves credit +--and finally an occasion presented itself." + +"And the woman you speak of was--rehabilitated?" Hodder asked. +He avoided the word "saved." + +"Yes, sir. It was one of the fortunate cases. There are others which +are not so fortunate." + +Hodder nodded. + +"We are beginning to recognize that we are dealing, in, many instances, +with a disease," Mr. Bentley went on. "I am far from saying that it +cannot be cured, but sometimes we are forced to admit that the cure is +not within our power, Mr. Hodder." + +Two thoughts struck the rector simultaneously, the: revelation of what +might be called a modern enlightenment in one of Mr. Bentley's age, an +indication of uninterrupted growth, of the sense of continued youth which +had impressed him from the beginning; and, secondly, an intimation from +the use of the plural pronoun we, of an association of workers (informal, +undoubtedly) behind Mr. Bentley. While he was engaged in these +speculations the door opened. + +"Heah's Miss Sally, Marse Ho'ace," said Sam. + +"Good morning, Sally," said Mr. Bentley, rising from the table with his +customary courtesy, "I'm glad you came in. Let me introduce Mr. Hodder, +of St. John's." + +Miss Grover had capability written all over her. She was a young woman +of thirty, slim to spareness, simply dressed in a shirtwaist and a dark +blue skirt; alert, so distinctly American in type as to give a suggestion +of the Indian. Her quick, deep-set eyes searched Hodder's face as she +jerked his hand; but her greeting was cordial, and, matter-of-fact. She +stimulated curiosity. + +"Well, Sally, what's the news?" Mr. Bentley asked. + +"Gratz, the cabinet-maker, was on the rampage again, Mr. Bentley. His +wife was here yesterday when I got home from work, and I went over with +her. He was in a beastly state, and all the niggers and children in the +neighbourhood, including his own, around the shop. Fusel oil, labelled +whiskey," she explained, succinctly. + +"What did you do?" + +"Took the bottle away from him," said Miss Grower. The simplicity of +this method, Holder thought, was undeniable. "Stayed there until he came +to. Then I reckon I scared him some." + +"How?" Mr. Bentley smiled. + +"I told him he'd have to see you. He'd rather serve three months than do +that--said so. I reckon he would, too," she declared grimly. "He's +better than he was last year, I think." She thrust her hand in the +pocket of her skirt and produced some bills and silver, which she +counted. "Here's three thirty-five from Sue Brady. I told her she +hadn't any business bothering you, but she swears she'd spend it." + +"That was wrong, Sally." + +Miss Grower tossed her head. + +"Oh, she knew I'd take it, well enough." + +"I imagine she did," Mr. Bentley replied, and his eyes twinkled. He rose +and led the way into the library, where he opened his desk, produced a +ledger, and wrote down the amount in a fine hand. + +"Susan Brady, three dollars and thirty-five cents. I'll put it in the +savings bank to-day. That makes twenty-two dollars and forty cents for +Sue. She's growing rich." + +"Some man'll get it," said Sally. + +"Sally," said Mr. Bentley, turning in his chair, "Mr. Holder's been +telling me about a rather unusual woman in that apartment house just +above Fourteenth Street, on the south side of Dalton." + +"I think I know her--by sight," Sally corrected herself. She appealed. +to Holder. "Red hair, and lots of it--I suppose a man would call it +auburn. She must have been something of a beauty, once." + +The rector assented, in some astonishment. + +"Couldn't do anything with her, could you? I reckoned not. I've noticed +her up and down Dalton Street at night." + +Holder was no longer deceived by her matter-of-fact tone. + +"I'll tell you what, Mr. Holder," she went on, energetically, "there's +not a particle of use running after those people, and the sooner you find +it out the less worry and trouble you give yourself." + +"Mr. Holder didn't run after her, Sally," said Mr. Bentley, in gentle +reproof. + +Holder smiled. + +"Well," said Miss Grower, "I've had my eye on her. She has a history +--most of 'em have. But this one's out of the common. When they're brazen +like that, and have had good looks, you can nearly always tell. You've. +got to wait for something to happen, and trust to luck to be on the spot, +or near it. It's a toss-up, of course. One thing is sure, you can't +make friends with that kind if they get a notion you're up to anything." + +"Sally, you must remember--" Mr. Bentley began. + +Her tone became modified. Mr. Bentley was apparently the only human of +whom she stood in awe. + +"All I meant was," she said, addressing the rector, "that you've got to +run across 'em in some natural way." + +"I understood perfectly, and I agree with you," Holder replied. "I have +come, quite recently, to the same conclusion myself." + +She gave him a penetrating glance, and he had to admit, inwardly, that a +certain satisfaction followed Miss Grower's approval. + +"Mercy, I have to be going," she exclaimed, glancing at the black marble +clock on the mantel. "We've got a lot of invoices to put through to-day. +See you again, Mr. Holder." She jerked his hand once more. "Good +morning, Mr. Bentley." + +"Good morning, Sally." + +Mr. Bentley rose, and took his hat and gold-headed stick from the rack in +the hall. + +"You mustn't mind Sally," he said, when they had reached the sidewalk. +"Sometimes her brusque manner is not understood. But she is a very +extraordinary woman." + +"I can see that," the rector assented quickly, and with a heartiness +that dispelled all doubt of his liking for Miss Grower. Once more many +questions rose to his lips, which he suppressed, since Mr. Bentley +volunteered no information. Hodder became, in fact, so lost in +speculation concerning Mr. Bentley's establishment as to forget the +errand on which--they were bound. And Sally Grower's words, apropos of +the woman in the flat, seemed but an energetic driving home of the severe +lessons of his recent experiences. And how blind he had been, he +reflected, not to have seen the thing for himself! Not to have realized +the essential artificiality of his former method of approach! And then +it struck him that Sally Grower herself must have had a history. + +Mr. Bentley, too, was preoccupied. + +Presently, in the midst of these thoughts, Hodder's eyes were arrested by +a crowd barring the sidewalk on the block ahead; no unusual sight in that +neighbourhood, and yet one which aroused in him sensations of weakness +and nausea. Thus were the hidden vice and suffering of these sinister +places occasionally brought to light, exposed to the curious and morbid +stares of those whose own turn might come on the morrow. It was only by +degrees he comprehended that the people were gathered in front of the +house to which they were bound. An ambulance was seen to drive away: it +turned into the aide street in front of them. + +"A city ambulance!" the rector exclaimed. + +Mr. Bentley did not reply. + +The murmuring group which overflowed the uneven brick pavement to the +asphalt was characteristic: women in calico, drudges, women in wrappers, +with sleepy, awestricken faces; idlers, men and boys who had run out of +the saloons, whose comments were more audible and caustic, and a fringe +of children ceaselessly moving on the outskirts. The crowd parted at +their approach, and they reached the gate, where a burly policeman, his +helmet in his hand, was standing in the morning sunlight mopping his face +with a red handkerchief. He greeted Mr. Bentley respectfully, by name, +and made way for them to pass in. + +"What is the trouble, Ryan?" Mr. Bentley asked. + +"Suicide, sir," the policeman replied. "Jumped off the bridge this +morning. A tug picked him up, but he never came to--the strength wasn't +in him. Sure it's all wore out he was. There was a letter on him, with +the home number, so they knew where to fetch him. It's a sad case, sir, +with the woman in there, and the child gone to the hospital not an hour +ago." + +"You mean Garvin?" Mr. Bentley demanded. + +"It's him I mean, sir." + +"We'd like to go in," said Mr. Bentley. "We came to see them." + +"You're welcome, air, and the minister too. It's only them I'm holdin' +back," and the policeman shook his stick at the people. + +Mr. Bentley walked up the steps, and took off his hat as he went through +the battered doorway. Hodder followed, with a sense of curious faces +staring at them from the thresholds as they passed; they reached the +upper passage, and the room, and paused: the shutters were closed, the +little couch where the child had been was empty. On the bed lay a form +--covered with a sheet, and beside it a woman kneeling, shaken by sobs, +ceaselessly calling a name . . . . + +A stout figure, hitherto unperceived, rose from a corner and came +silently toward them--Mrs. Breitmann. She beckoned to them, and they +followed her into a room on the same floor, where she told them what she +knew, heedless of the tears coursing ceaselessly down her cheeks. + +It seemed that Mrs. Garvin had had a premonition which she had not wholly +confided to the rector. She had believed her husband never would come +back; and early in the morning, in spite of all that Mrs. Breitmann could +do, had insisted at intervals upon running downstairs and scanning the +street. At half past seven Dr. Jarvis had come and himself carried down +the child and put him in the back of his automobile. The doctor had had +a nurse with him, and had begged the mother to accompany them to the +hospital, saying that he would send her back. But she would not be +persuaded to leave the house. The doctor could not wait, and had finally +gone off with little. Dicky, leaving a powder with Mrs. Breitmann for +the mother. Then she had become uncontrollable. + +"Ach, it was terrible!" said the kind woman. "She was crazy, yes--she +was not in her mind. I make a little coffee, but she will not touch it. +All those things about her home she would talk of, and how good he was, +and how she lofed him more again than the child. + +"Und then the wheels in the street, and she makes a cry and runs to see +--I cannot hold her . . . ." + +"It would be well not to disturb her for a while," said Mr. Bentley, +seating himself on one of the dilapidated chairs which formed apart of +the German woman's meagre furniture. "I will remain here if you, Mr. +Hodder, will make the necessary arrangements for the funeral. Have you +any objections, sir?" + +"Not at all," replied the rector, and left the house, the occupants of +which had already returned to the daily round of their lives: the rattle +of dishes and the noise of voices were heard in the 'ci devant' parlour, +and on the steps he met the little waif with the pitcher of beer; in the +street the boys who had gathered around the ambulance were playing +baseball. Hodder glanced up, involuntarily, at the window of the woman +he had visited the night before, but it was empty. He hurried along the +littered sidewalks to the drug store, where he telephoned an undertaker; +and then, as an afterthought, telephoned the hospital. The boy had +arrived, and was seemingly no worse for the journey. + +All this Hodder performed mechanically. Not until he was returning--not, +indeed, until he entered the house did the whiff of its degrading, heated +odours bring home to him the tragedy which it held, and he grasped the +banister on the stairs. The thought that shook him now was of the +cumulative misery of the city, of the world, of which this history on +which he had stumbled was but one insignificant incident. But he went on +into Mrs. Breitmann's room, and saw Mr. Bentley still seated where he had +left him. The old gentleman looked up at him. + +"Mrs. Breitmann and I are agreed, Mr. Hodder, that Mrs. Garvin ought not +to remain in there. What do you think?" + +"By all means, no," said the rector. + +The German woman burst into a soliloquy of sympathy that became +incoherent. + +"She will not leave him,--nein--she will not come. . . ." + +They went, the three of them, to the doorway of the death chamber and +stood gazing at the huddled figure of the woman by the bedside. She had +ceased to cry out: she was as one grown numb under torture; occasionally +a convulsive shudder shook her. But when Mrs. Breitmann touched her, +spoke to her, her grief awoke again in all its violence, and it was more +by force than persuasion that she was finally removed. Mrs. Breitmann +held one arm, Mr. Bentley another, and between them they fairly carried +her out, for she was frail indeed. + +As for Hodder, something held him back--some dread that he could not at +once define. And while he groped for it, he stood staring at the man on +the bed, for the hand of love had drawn back the sheet from the face. +The battle was over of this poor weakling against the world; the torments +of haunting fear and hate, of drink and despair had triumphed. The sight +of the little group of toys brought up the image of the home in Alder +Street as the wife had pictured it. Was it possible that this man, who +had gone alone to the bridge in the night, had once been happy, content +with life, grateful for it, possessed of a simple trust in his +fellow-men--in Eldon Parr? Once more, unsummoned, came the memory of that +evening of rain and thunder in the boy's room at the top of the great +horse in Park Street. He had pitied Eldon Parr then. Did he now? + +He crossed the room, on tiptoe, as though he feared to wake once more +this poor wretch to his misery and hate, Gently he covered again the face +with the sheet. + +Suddenly he knew the reason of his dread,--he had to face the woman! +He was a minister of Christ, it was his duty to speak to her, as he had +spoken to others in the hour of sorrow and death, of the justice and +goodness of the God to whom she had prayed in the church. What should he +say, now? In an agony of spirit, he sat down on the little couch beside +the window and buried his face in his hands. The sight of poor Garvin's +white and wasted features, the terrible contrast between this miserable +tenement and the palace with its unseen pictures and porcelains and +tapestries, brought home to him with indescribable poignancy his own +predicament. He was going to ask this woman to be comforted by faith and +trust in the God of the man who had driven her husband to death! He +beheld Eldon Parr in his pew complacently worshipping that God, who had +rewarded him with riches and success--beheld himself as another man in +his white surplice acquiescing in that God, preaching vainly . . . . + +At last he got to his feet, went out of the room, reached the doorway of +that other room and looked in. Mr. Bentley sat there; and the woman, +whose tears had ceased to flow, was looking up into his face. + + + +II + +"The office ensuing," says the Book of Common Prayer, meaning the Burial +of the Dead, "is not to be used for any Unbaptized adult, any who die +excommunicate, or who have laid violent hands on themselves." + +Hodder had bought, with a part of Nan Ferguson's money, a tiny plot in a +remote corner of Winterbourne Cemetery. And thither, the next morning, +the body of Richard Garvin was taken. + +A few mourners had stolen into the house and up the threadbare stairs +into the miserable little back room, somehow dignified as it had never +been before, and laid their gifts upon the coffin. An odd and pitiful +assortment they were--mourners and gifts: men and women whose only bond +with the man in life had been the bond of misery; who had seen him as he +had fared forth morning after morning in the hopeless search for work, +and slunk home night after night bitter and dejected; many of whom had +listened, jeeringly perhaps, to his grievance against the world, though +it were in some sort their own. Death, for them, had ennobled him. The +little girl whom Hodder had met with the pitcher of beer came tiptoeing +with a wilted bunch of pansies, picked heaven knows where; stolen, maybe, +from one of the gardens of the West End. Carnations, lilies of the +valley, geraniums even--such were the offerings scattered loosely on the +lid until a woman came with a mass of white roses that filled the room +with their fragrance,--a woman with burnished red hair. Hodder started +as he recognized her; her gaze was a strange mixture of effrontery and +--something else; sorrow did not quite express it. The very lavishness of +her gift brought to him irresistibly the reminder of another offering. +. . . . She was speaking. + +"I don't blame him for what he done--I'd have done it, too, if I'd been +him. But say, I felt kind of bad when I heard it, knowing about the kid, +and all. I had to bring something--" + +Instinctively Hodder surmised that she was in doubt as to the acceptance +of her flowers. He took them from her hand, and laid them at the foot of +the coffin. + +"Thank you," he said, simply. + +She stared at him a moment with the perplexity she had shown at times on +the night he visited her, and went out. . . + +Funerals, if they might be dignified by this name, were not infrequent +occurrences in Dalton Street, and why this one should have been looked +upon as of sufficient importance to collect a group of onlookers at the +gate it is difficult to say. Perhaps it was because of the seeming +interest in it of the higher powers--for suicide and consequent widows +and orphans were not unknown there. This widow and this orphan were to +be miraculously rescued, were to know Dalton Street no more. The rector +of a fashionable church, of all beings, was the agent in the miracle. +Thus the occasion was tinged with awe. As for Mr. Bentley, his was a +familiar figure, and had been remarked in Dalton Street funerals before. + +They started, the three mourners, on the long drive to the cemetery, +through unfrequented streets lined with mediocre dwellings, interspersed +with groceries and saloons--short cuts known only to hearse drivers: they +traversed, for some distance, that very Wilderness road where Mr. +Bentley's old-fashioned mansion once had stood on its long green slope, +framed by ancient trees; the Wilderness road, now paved with hot blocks +of granite over which the carriage rattled; spread with car tracks, +bordered by heterogeneous buildings of all characters and descriptions, +bakeries and breweries, slaughter houses and markets, tumble-down +shanties, weedy corner lots and "refreshment-houses" that announced +"Lager Beer, Wines and Liquors." At last they came to a region which was +neither country nor city, where the road-houses were still in evidence, +where the glass roofs of greenhouses caught the burning rays of the sun, +where yards filled with marble blocks and half-finished tombstones +appeared, and then they turned into the gates of Winterbourne. + +Like the city itself, there was a fashionable district in Winterbourne: +unlike the city, this district remained stationary. There was no soot +here, and if there had been, the dead would not have minded it. They +passed the Prestons and the Parrs; the lots grew smaller, the tombstones +less pretentious; and finally they came to an open grave on a slope where +the trees were still young, and where three men of the cemetery force +lifted the coffin from the hearse--Richard Garvin's pallbearers. + +John Hodder might not read the service, but there was none to tell him +that the Gospel of John was not written for this man. He stood an the +grass beside the grave, and a breeze from across the great river near by +stirred the maple leaves above his head. "I am the resurrection and the +life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet +shall he live." Nor was there any canon to forbid the words of Paul: +"It is sown in corruption; it is raised in in corruption; it is sown in +dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in +power; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." + +They laid the flowers on the fresh earth, even the white roses, and then +they drove back to the city. + + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +A SATURDAY AFTERNOON + + +I + +The sight of a certain old gentleman as he walked along the shady side of +Twenty-second Street about two o'clock on a broiling Saturday afternoon +in midsummer was one not easily to be forgotten. A younger man, tall and +vigorous, clad in a thin suit of blue serge, walked by his side. They +were followed by a shouting troop of small boys who overran the +pavements, and some of whom were armed with baseball bats. The big +trolley car was hailed by a dozen dirty little hands. + +Even the grumpy passengers were disarmed. The conductor took Mr. +Bentley's bill deprecatingly, as much as to say that the newly organized +Traction Company--just out of the receivers' hands--were the Moloch, not +he, and rang off the fares under protest. And Mr. Bentley, as had been +his custom for years, sat down and took off his hat, and smiled so +benignly at those around him that they immediately began to talk, to him. +It was always irresistible, this desire to talk to Mr. Bentley. If you +had left your office irritated and out of sorts, your nerves worn to an +edge by the uninterrupted heat, you invariably got off at your corner +feeling better. It was Phil Goodrich who had said that Horace Bentley +had only to get on a Tower Street car to turn it into a church. And if +he had chosen to establish that 'dernier cri' of modern civilization +where ladies go who have 'welt-schmerz' without knowing why, +--a sanitarium, he might have gained back again all the money he had lost +in giving his Grantham stock to Eldon Parr. + +Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he could have emptied Dalton Street of +its children. In the first place, there was the irresistible inducement +to any boy to ride several miles on a trolley without having this right +challenged by the irate guardian of the vehicle, without being summarily +requested to alight at twenty-five miles an hour: in the second place, +there was the soda water and sweet biscuit partaken of after the baseball +game in that pavilion, more imposing in one's eyes than the Taj Mahal. +Mr. Bentley would willingly have taken all Dalton Street. He had his own +'welt-schmerz', though he did not go to a sanitarium to cure it; he was +forced to set an age limit of ten, and then establish a high court of +appeal; for there were boys whose biographies, if they are ever written, +will be as hazy as those of certain world-wide celebrities who might be +mentioned concerning the date and exact spot of the entrance of their +heroes into the light. The solemn protestations, the tears, +the recrimination even, brought pangs to the old gentleman's heart, +for with all the will in the world he had been forced in the nature +of things, to set a limit. + +This limit had recently been increased by the unlooked-for appearance on +these excursions of the tall man in the blue serge suit, whose knowledge +of the national game and of other matters of vital import to youth was +gratifying if sometimes disconcerting; who towered, an unruffled +Gulliver, over their Lilliputian controversies, in which bats were waved +and fists brought into play and language used on the meaning of which +the Century dictionary is silent. On one former occasion, indeed, +Mr. Bentley had found moral suasion, affection, and veneration of no +avail, and had had to invoke the friendly aid of a park policeman to +quell one of these incipient riots. To Mr. Bentley baseball was as a +sealed book. The tall man's justice, not always worthy of the traditions +of Solomon, had in it an element of force. To be lifted off the ground +by strong arms at the moment you are about to dust the home plate with +your adversary is humiliating, but effective. It gradually became +apparent that a decision was a decision. And one Saturday this +inexplicable person carried in his hand a mysterious package which, when +opened, revealed two pairs of diminutive boxing gloves. They instantly +became popular. + +By the time they had made the accidental and somewhat astounding +discovery that he was a parson, they were willing to overlook it; in +view, perhaps, of his compensating accomplishments. Instead of advising +them to turn the other cheek, he taught them uppercuts, feints, and jabs, +and on the proof of this unexpected acquaintance with a profession all of +them openly admired, the last vestige of reserve disappeared. He was +accepted without qualifications. + + + +II + +Although the field to which they resorted was not in the most frequented +section of the park, pedestrians often passed that way, and sometimes +lingered. Thus, towards the close of a certain Saturday in July, a young +woman walked out of the wood path and stood awhile gazing intently at the +active figure striding among the diminutive, darting forms. Presently, +with an amused expression, she turned her head to discover Mr. Bentley, +who sat on a green bench under a tree, his hat and stick on the grass +beside him. She was unaware that he had been looking at her. + +"Aren't they having a good time!" she said, and the genuine thrill in her +voice betrayed a rare and unmistakable pleasure. + +"Ah," replied Mr. Bentley, smiling back at her, "you like to see them, +too. Most persons do. Children are not meant for the city, my dear +young lady, their natural home is in the woods and fields, and these +little fellows are a proof of it. When they come out here, they run +wild. You perceive," he added with a twinkle, as an expletive of +unquestionable vigour was hurled across the diamond, "they are not +always so polite as they might be." + +The young woman smiled again, but the look she gave him was a puzzled +one. And then, quite naturally, she sank, down on the grass, on the +other side of Mr. Bentley's hat, watching the game for a while in +silence. + +"What a tyrant!" she exclaimed. Another uproar had been quelled, +and two vigorously protesting runners sent back to their former bases. + +"Oh, a benevolent tyrant," Mr. Bentley corrected her. "Mr. Hodder has +the gift of managing boys,--he understands them. And they require a +strong hand. His generation has had the training which mine lacked. In +my day, at college, we worked off our surplus energy on the unfortunate +professors, and we carried away chapel bells and fought with the +townspeople." + +It required some effort, she found, to imagine this benevolent looking +old gentleman assaulting professors. + +"Nowadays they play baseball and football, and box!" He pointed to the +boxing gloves on the grass. "Mr. Hodder has taught them to settle their +differences in that way; it is much more sensible." + +She picked off the white clover-tops. + +"So that is Mr. Hodder, of St. John's," she said. + +"Ah, you know him, then?" + +"I've met him," she answered quietly. "Are these children connected with +his church?" + +"They are little waifs from Dalton Street and that vicinity," said Mr. +Bentley. "Very few of them, I should imagine, have ever been inside of a +church." + +She seemed surprised. + +"But--is it his habit to bring them out here?" The old gentleman beamed +on her, perhaps with the hint of a smile at her curiosity. + +"He has found time for it, this summer. It is very good of him." + +She refrained from comment on this remark, falling into reflection, +leaning back, with one hand outstretched, on the grass. The game went on +vociferously, the shrill lithe voices piercing the silence of the summer +afternoon. Mr. Bentley's eyes continued to rest on her. + +"Tell me," he inquired, after a while, "are you not Alison Parr?" + +She glanced up at him, startled. "Yes." + +"I thought so, although I have not seen you since you were a little girl. +I knew your mother very well indeed, but it is too much to expect you to +remember me, after all this time. No doubt you have forgotten my name. +I am Mr. Bentley." + +"Mr. Bentley!" she cried, sitting upright and gazing at him. "How stupid +of me not to have known you! You couldn't have been any one else." + +It was the old gentleman's turn to start. She rose impulsively and sat +down on the bench beside him, and his hand trembled as he laid it in +hers. + +"Yes, my dear, I am still alive. But surely you cannot remember me, +Alison?" + +The old look of almost stubborn honesty he recalled in the child came +into her eyes. + +"I do--and I don't," she said, perplexed. "It seemed to me as if I ought +to have recognized you when I came up, and yet I hadn't the slightest +notion who you were. I knew you were somebody." + +He shook his head, but did not speak. + +"But you have always been a fact in my existence--that is what I want to +say," she went on. "It must be possible to remember a person and not +recognize him, that is what I feel. I can remember you coming to our +house in Ransome Street, and how I looked forward to your visits. And +you used to have little candy beans in your pockets," she cried. "Have +you now?" + +His eyes were a little dimmed as he reached, smilingly, into the skirts +of a somewhat shiny but scrupulously brushed coat and produced a brightly +colored handful. She took one, and put it in her mouth: + +"Oh," she said, "how good they were--Isn't it strange how a taste brings +back events? I can remember it all as if it were yesterday, and how I +used to sit on your knee, and mother would tell me not to bother you." + +"And now--you are grown," he said. + +"Something more than grown," she smiled. "I was thirty-one in May. +Tell me," she asked, choosing another of the beans which he still +absently held, "do you get them for these?" And she nodded toward the +Dalton Street waifs. + +"Yes," he said, "they are children, too." + +"I can remember," she said, after a pause, "I can remember my mother +speaking of you to me the year she died. I was almost grown, then. It +was after we had moved up to Park Street, and her health had already +begun to fail. That made an impression on me, but I have forgotten what +she said--it was apropos of some recollection. No--it was a photograph +--she was going over some old things." Alison ceased speaking abruptly, +for the pain in Mr. Bentley's remarkable grey eyes had not escaped her. +What was it about him? Why could she not recall? Long-forgotten, +shadowy episodes of the past tormented her, flitted provokingly through +her mind--ungrasped: words dropped in her presence which had made their +impression, but the gist of which was gone. Why had Mr. Bentley ceased +coming to the house? So strongly did she feel his presence now that the +thought occurred to her,--perhaps her mother had not wished her to forget +him! + +"I did not suspect," she heard him saying, "that you would go out into +the world and create the beautiful gardens of which I have heard. But +you had no lack of spirit in those days, too." + +"I was a most disagreeable child, perverse,--cantankerous--I can hear my +mother saying it! As for the gardens--they have given me something to +do, they have kept me out of mischief. I suppose I ought to be thankful, +but I still have the rebellious streak when I see what others have done, +what others are doing, and I sometimes wonder what right I ever had to +think that I might create something worth while." + +He glanced at her quickly as she sat with bent head. + +"Others put a higher value on what you have done." + +"Oh, they don't know--" she exclaimed. + +If something were revealed to him by her tone, he did not betray it, but +went on cheerfully. + +"You have been away a long time, Alison. It must interest you to come +back, and see the changes in our Western civilization. We are moving +very rapidly--in certain directions," he corrected himself. + +She appraised his qualification. + +"In certain directions,--yes. But they are little better in the East. +I have scarcely been back," she added, "since I went to Paris to study. +I have often thought I should like to return and stay awhile, only +--I never seemed to get time. Now I am going over a garden for my father +which was one of my first efforts, and which has always reproached me." + +"And you do not mind the heat?" he asked. "Those who go East to live +return to find our summers oppressive." + +"Oh, I'm a salamander, I think," Alison laughed. + +Thus they sat chatting, interrupted once or twice by urchins too small +to join in the game, who came running to Mr. Bentley and stood staring +at Alison as at a being beyond the borders of experience: and she would +smile at them quite as shyly,--children being beyond her own. Her +imagination was as keen, as unspoiled as a child's, and was stimulated by +a sense of adventure, of the mystery which hung about this fine old +gentleman who betrayed such sentiment for a mother whom she had loved and +admired and still secretly mourned. Here, if there had been no other, +was a compelling bond of sympathy . . . . + +The shadows grew longer, the game broke up. And Hodder, surrounded by +an argumentative group keeping pace with him, came toward them from the +field; Alison watched him curiously as he turned this way and that to +answer the insistent questions with which he was pelted, and once she saw +him stride rapidly after a dodging delinquent and seize him by the collar +amidst piercing yells of approval, and derision for the rebel. + +"It's remarkable how he gets along with them," said Mr. Bentley, smiling +at the scene. "Most of them have never known what discipline is." + +The chorus approached. And Hodder, recognizing her, dropped the collar +he held: A young woman conversing with Mr. Bentley--was no unusual sight, +--he had made no speculations as to this one's identity. He left the +boys, and drew near. + +"You know Miss Parr, I believe," the old gentleman said. + +Hodder took her hand. He had often tried to imagine his feelings if he +should meet her again: what he should do and say,--what would be their +footing. And now he had no time to prepare . . . . + +"It is so strange," she said, with that note of wonder at life in her +voice which he recalled so well, "that I should have come across Mr. +Bentley here after so many years. How many years, Mr. Bentley?" + +"Ah, my dear," he protested, "my measurements would not be yours." + +"It is better for both of us not to say, Alison declared, laughingly. + +"You knew Mr. Bentley?" asked Hodder, astonished. + +"He was a very dear friend of my mother's, although I used to appropriate +him when he came to our house. It was when we lived in Ransome Street, +ages ago. But I don't think Mr. Bentley has grown a bit older." + +"He is one of the few who have found the secret of youth," said the +rector. + +But the old gentleman had moved off into the path, or perhaps it would be +more accurate to say that he was carried off by the swarm which clustered +around him, two smaller ones tugging at his hand, and all intent upon +arriving at the soda-water pavilion near the entrance. They had followed +him with their eyes, and they saw him turn around and smile at them, +helplessly. Alison presented a perplexed face to Hodder. + +"Does he bring them here,--or you?" she asked. + +"I--" he hesitated. "Mr. Bentley has done this every Saturday afternoon +for years," he said, "I am merely one of them." + +She looked at him quickly. They had started to follow, in the cool path +beneath the forest trees. Restraint fell upon them, brought about by the +memory of the intimacy of their former meeting, further complicated on +Hodder's part by his new attitude toward her father, and his finding her +in the company, of all persons, of Mr. Bentley. Unuttered queries +pressed on the minds of both. + +"Tell me about Mr. Bentley," she said. + +Hodder hesitated. + +"I scarcely know where to begin," he replied, yet smiling at the +characteristic abruptness of her question. The modulations of her voice +revealed again the searching, inquisitive spirit within her, and his +responded to the intensity of the interest in Mr. Bentley. + +"Begin anywhere." + +"Anywhere?" he repeated, seeking to gain time. + +"Yes--anywhere," she said impatiently. + +"Well, he lives in Dalton Street, if you recall what kind of a place that +is" (she nodded), "and he is known from one end of it to the other." + +"I see what he is--he is the most extraordinary person I have ever known. +Just to talk to him gives one such a queer feeling of--of dissatisfaction +with one's self, and seeing him once more seems to have half revived in +me a whole series of dead memories. And I have been trying to think, but +it is all so tantalizing. There is some mystery about him," she +insisted. "He disappeared suddenly, and my mother never mentioned him +but once afterward, but other persons have spoken of him since--I forget +who. He was so well known, and he used to go to St. John's." + +"Yes, he used to go to St. John's." + +"What happened to him--do you know? The reason he stopped coming to our +house was some misunderstanding with my father, of course. I am positive +my mother never changed her feelings toward him." + +"I can only tell you what he has told me, which is all I know +--authoritatively," Hodder replied. How could he say to her that her +father had ruined Mr. Bentley? Indeed, with a woman of her fearlessness +and honesty--and above all, her intuition,--he felt the cruelty of his +position keenly. Hodder did not relish half truths; and he felt +that, however scant his intercourse in the future might be with Alison +Parr, he would have liked to have kept it on that basis of frankness in +which it had begun. But the exact stage of disillusionment she had +reached in regard to Eldon Parr was unknown to him, and he feared that +a further revelation might possibly sever the already precarious tie +between father and daughter. + +He recounted, therefore, that Mr. Bentley had failed; and how he had +before that given much of his estate away in charity, how he had been +unable to keep his pew in St. John's, and had retired to the house in +Dalton Street. + +For some moments after he had finished Alison did not reply. + +"What is his number in Dalton Street?" she asked. + +Hodder informed her. + +He could not read in her face whether she suspected that he could have +told her more. And in spite of an inordinate, human joy in being again +in her presence, his desire to hide from her that which had taken place +within him, and the inability he felt to read his future, were +instinctive: the more so because of the very spontaneity they had +achieved at their first meeting. As a man, he shrank from confessing +to her, however indirectly, the fact that she herself was so vital an +element in his disillusionment. For the conversation in the garden had +been the immediate cause of the inner ferment ending in his resolution to +go away, and had directed him, by logical steps, to the encounter in the +church with Mrs. Garvin. + +"You have not yet finished the garden?" he asked. "I imagined you back +in the East by this time." + +"Oh, I am procrastinating," she replied. "It is a fit of sheer laziness. +I ought to be elsewhere, but I was born without a conscience. If I had +one I should try to quiet it by reminding it that I am fulfilling a +long-delayed promise--I am making a garden for Mrs. Larrabbee. You know +her, of course, since she is a member of your congregation." + +"Yes, I know her," he assented. And his mind was suddenly filled with +vivid colour,--cobalt seas, and arsenic-green spruces with purple cones, +cardinal-striped awnings that rattled in the salt breeze, and he saw once +more the panorama of the life which had passed from him and the woman in +the midst of it. And his overwhelming thought was of relief that he had +somehow escaped. In spite of his unhappiness now, he would not have gone +back. He realized for the first time that he had been nearer +annihilation then than to-day. + +"Grace isn't here to bother me with the ideas she has picked up in Europe +and catalogued," Alison continued. + +"Catalogued!" Hodder exclaimed, struck by the pertinency of the word. + +"Yes. Did you ever know anybody who had succeeded half so well in +piecing together and absorbing into a harmonized whole all the divergent, +artificial elements that enter into the conventional world to-day? Her +character might be called a triumph of synthesis. For she has actually +achieved an individuality--that is what always surprises me when I think +of her. She has put the puzzle picture together, she has become a +person." + +He remembered, with a start, that this was the exact word Mrs. Larrabbee +had used about Alison Parr. If he had searched the world, he could not +have found a greater contrast than that between these two women. And +when she spoke again, he was to be further struck by her power of logical +insight. + +"Grace wants me because she thinks I have become the fashion--for the +same reason that Charlotte Plimpton wants me. Only there is this +difference--Grace will know the exact value of what I shall have done. +Not that she thinks me a Le Notre"--Alison laughed--"What I mean is, she +sees behind, she sees why it is fashionable to have a garden, since she +has worked out the values of that existence. But there!" Alison added, +with a provocative touch that did not escape him, "I am picking your +parishioners to pieces again." + +"You have more right than I," he replied, "they have been your friends +since childhood." + +"I thought you had gone away," she said. + +"Why?" he demanded. Had she been to church again? + +"My father told me before he left that you were to take a cruise with him +on the yacht he has chartered." + +"He wrote me from New York--I was unable to go," Hodder said slowly. + +He felt her gaze upon him, but resolutely refused to meet it. . . . +They walked on in silence until they came to the more open spaces near +the edge of the Park, thronged that Saturday evening by crowds which had +sought the, city's breathing space. Perfect trees cast long, fantastic +shadows across the lawns, fountains flung up rainbows from the midst of +lakes; children of the tenements darted hither and thither, rolled and +romped on the grass; family parties picnicked everywhere, and a very +babel of tongues greeted the ear--the languages of Europe from Sweden to +Italy. + +Suddenly an exclamation from her aroused and thrilled him. + +"Isn't it wonderful how happy they are, and with what simple pleasures +they are satisfied! I often come over here on Saturdays and Sundays, +just to talk to them." + +"Talk to them!" he echoed stupidly. "In their own languages?" + +"Oh, I know a little German and Italian, though I can't lay claim to +Czech," she answered gayly. "Why are you so surprised that I should +possess such modest accomplishments?" + +"It's not the accomplishments." He hesitated. + +"No. You are surprised that I should be interested in humanity." She +stood facing him. "Well, I am," she said, half humorously, half +defiantly. "I believe I am more interested in human beings than in +anything else in the world--when they are natural, as these people are +and when they will tell one their joys and their troubles and their +opinions." + +"Enthusiasm, self-assertion, had as usual, transformed her, and he saw +the colour glowing under her olive skin. Was she accusing him of a lack +of frankness? + +"And why," he asked, collecting himself, "did you think--" he got no +further. + +"It's because you have an idea that I'm a selfish Epicurean, if that +isn't tautology--because I'm interested in a form of art, the rest of the +world can go hang. You have a prejudice against artists. I wish I +really were one, but I'm not." + +This speech contained so many surprises for him that he scarcely knew how +to answer it. + +"Give me a little time," he begged, "and perhaps I'll get over my +prejudices. The worst of them, at any rate. You are helping me to do +so." He tried to speak lightly, but his tone was more serious in the +next sentence. "It seems to me personally that you have proved your +concern for your fellow-creatures." + +Her colour grew deeper, her manner changed. + +"That gives me the opportunity to say something I have hoped to say, ever +since I saw you. I hoped I should see you again." + +"You are not going away soon?" he exclaimed. + +The words were spoken before he grasped their significance. + +"Not at once. I don't know how long I shall stay," she answered +hurriedly, intent upon what was in her mind. "I have thought a great +deal about what I said to you that afternoon, and I find it more than +ever difficult to excuse myself. I shan't attempt to. I merely mean to +ask you to forgive me." + +"There is nothing to forgive," he assured her, under the influence of the +feeling she had aroused. + +"It's nice of you to say so, and to take it as you did--nicer than I can +express. I am afraid I shall never learn to appreciate that there may be +other points of view toward life than my own. And I should have realized +and sympathized with the difficulties of your position, and that you were +doing the best under the circumstances." + +"No," he exclaimed, "don't say that! Your other instinct was the truer +one, if indeed you have really changed it--I don't believe you have." He +smiled at her again. "You didn't hurt my feelings, you did me a service. +I told you so at the time, and I meant it. And, more than that, I +understood." + +"You understood--?" + +"You were not criticizing me, you were--what shall I say?--merely trying +to iron out some of the inconsistencies of life. Well, you helped me to +iron out some of the inconsistencies of my own. I am profoundly +grateful." + +She gazed at him, puzzled. But he did not, he could not enlighten her. +Some day she would discover what he meant. + +"If so, I am glad," she said, in a low voice. + +They were standing in the midst of the crowd that thronged around the +pavilion. An urchin caught hold of the rector's coat. + +"Here he is! Say, Mr. Hodder, ain't you going to have any sody?" + +"Certainly we are," he replied, returning Alison's faint smile . . . . +In the confusion that followed he caught a glimpse of her talking to Mr. +Bentley; and later, after he had taken her hand, his eyes followed her +figure wending its way in the evening light through the groups toward +Park Street, and he saw above the tree-tops the red tiled roof of the +great house in which she was living, alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE CRUCIBLE + + +I + +For better or worse John Hodder had flung his treasured beliefs into the +crucible, and one by one he watched them crumble and consume away. None +but his own soul knew what it cost him to make the test; and some times, +in the early stages of it, he would cast down his book under the lamp and +walk for hours in the night. Curiosity, and the despair of one who is +lost impelled him to persist. + +It had been said of him that he had a talent for the law, and he now +discovered that his mind, once freed, weighed the evidence with a +pitiless logic, paid its own tribute--despite the anguish of the heart +--to the pioneers of truth whose trail it followed into the Unknown, who +had held no Mystery more sacred than Truth itself, who had dared to +venture into the nothingness between the whirling worlds. + +He considered them, those whirling worlds, at night. Once they had been +the candles of Jehovah, to light the path of his chosen nation, to herald +the birth of his Son. And now? How many billions of blind, struggling +creatures clung to them? Where now was this pin-point of humanity, in +the midst of an appalling spectacle of a grinding, remorseless nature? + +And that obscure Event on which he had staked his hopes? Was He, as John +had written, the First Born of the Universe, the Word Incarnate of a +system that defied time and space, the Logos of an outworn philosophy? +Was that Universe conscious, as Berkeley had declared, or the blind +monster of substance alone, or energy, as some modern scientists brutally +and triumphantly maintained? Where was the Spirit that breathed in it of +hope? + +Such were some of the questions that thronged for solution. What was +mind, what spirit? an attenuated vapour of the all-pervading substance? + +He could not permit himself to dwell on these thoughts--madness lay that +way. Madness, and a watching demon that whispered of substance, and +sought to guide his wanderings in the night. Hodder clung to the shell +of reality, to the tiny panorama of the visible and the finite, to the +infinitesimal gropings that lay recorded before him on the printed page. +Let him examine these first, let him discover--despite the price--what +warrant the mind of man (the only light now vouchsafed to him in his +darkness) gave him to speculate and to hope concerning the existence +of a higher, truer Reality than that which now tossed and wounded him. +It were better to know. + +Scarcely had the body been lifted from the tree than the disputes +commenced, the adulterations crept in. The spontaneity, the fire and +zeal of the self-sacrificing itinerant preachers gave place to the +paralyzing logic then pervading the Roman Empire, and which had sent its +curse down the ages to the modern sermon; the geometrical rules of Euclid +were made to solve the secrets of the universe. The simple faith of the +cross which had inspired the martyr along the bloody way from Ephesus to +the Circus at Rome was formalized by degrees into philosophy: the faith +of future ages was settled by compromises, by manipulation, by bribery in +Councils of the Church which resembled modern political conventions, and +in which pagan Emperors did not hesitate to exert their influence over +the metaphysical bishops of the factions. Recriminations, executions, +murders--so the chronicles ran. + +The prophet, the idealist disappeared, the priest with his rites and +ceremonies and sacrifices, his power to save and damn, was once more in +possession of the world. + +The Son of Man was degraded into an infant in his mother's arms. An +unhealthy, degenerating asceticism, drawn from pagan sources, began with +the monks and anchorites of Egypt and culminated in the spectacle of +Simeon's pillar. The mysteries of Eleusis, of Attis, Mithras, Magna +Mater and Isis developed into Christian sacraments--the symbol became +the thing itself. Baptism the confession of the new life, following +the customs of these cults, became initiation; and from the same +superstitious origins, the repellent materialistic belief that to eat +of the flesh and drink of the blood of a god was to gain immortality: +immortality of the body, of course. + + +Ah, when the superstitions of remote peoples, the fables and myths, were +taken away; when the manufactured history and determinism of the +Israelites from the fall of man to the coming of that Messiah, whom the +Jews crucified because he failed to bring them their material Kingdom, +were discredited; when the polemic and literal interpretations of +evangelists had been rejected, and the pious frauds of tampering monks; +when the ascetic Buddhism was removed; the cults and mysteries, the +dogmas of an ancient naive philosophy discarded; the crude science of a +Ptolemy who conceived the earth as a flat terrestrial expanse and hell +as a smoking pit beneath proved false; the revelation of a Holy City of +jasper and gold and crystal, the hierarchy with its divine franchise to +save and rule and conquer,--when all these and more were eliminated from +Christianity, what was left? + +Hodder surveyed the ruins. And his mind recalled, that Sunday of rain in +New York which had been the turning-point in his life, when he had +listened to the preacher, when he had walked the streets unmindful of the +wet, led on by visions, racked by fears. And the same terror returned to +him now after all the years of respite, tenfold increased, of falling in +the sight of man from the topmost tower. + +What was to become of him, now that the very driving power of life was +gone? Where would he go? to what might he turn his hand, since all were +vanity and illusion? Careers meant nothing, had any indeed been possible +to a man forty, left staring at stark reality after the rainbow had +vanished. Nineveh had mocked and conquered him who had thought himself +a conqueror. Self flew back and swung on its central pivot and took +command. His future, his fate, what was to become of him. Who else now +was to be considered? And what was to restrain him from reaching out his +hand to pluck the fruit which he desired? . . . + + + +II + +What control from the Unknown is this which now depresses and now +releases the sensitive thing called the soul of man, and sends it upward +again until the green light of hope shines through the surface water? +He might have grown accustomed, Holder thought, to the obscurity of the +deeps; in which, after a while, the sharp agony of existence became +dulled, the pressure benumbing. He was conscious himself, at such times, +of no inner recuperation. Something drew him up, and he would find +himself living again, at length to recognize the hand if not to +comprehend the power. + +The hand was Horace Bentley's. + +What was the source of that serenity which shone on the face of his +friend? Was it the light of faith? Faith in--what? Humanity, Mr. +Bentley had told him on that first evening when they had met: faith in a +world filled with cruelties, disillusionments, lies, and cheats! On what +Authority was it based? Holder never asked, and no word of theology ever +crossed Mr. Bentley's lips; not by so much as a sign did he betray any +knowledge he may have had of the drama taking place in Holder's soul; no +comment escaped him on the amazing anomalies of the life the rector was +leading, in the Church but not of it. + +It was only by degrees Holder came to understand that no question would +be asked, and the frequency of his visits to Dalton Street increased. +He directed his steps thither sometimes hurriedly, as though pursued, as +to a haven from a storm. And a haven it was indeed! At all hours of the +day he came, and oftener in the night, in those first weeks, and if Mr. +Bentley were not at home the very sight of the hospitable old darky +brought surging up within him a sense of security, of, relief; the +library itself was filled with the peace of its owner. How many others +had brought their troubles here, had been lightened on the very threshold +of this sanctuary! + +Gradually Hodder began to realize something of their numbers. Gradually, +as he was drawn more and more into the network of the relationships of +this extraordinary man,--nay, as he inevitably became a part of that +network,--a period of bewilderment ensued. He found himself involved, +and quite naturally, in unpremeditated activities, running errands, +forming human ties on a human basis. No question was asked, no +credentials demanded or rejected. Who he was made no difference +--he was a friend of Horace Bentley's. He had less time to read, less +time to think, to scan the veil of his future. + +He had run through a score of volumes, critical, philosophical, +scientific, absorbing their contents, eagerly anticipating their +conclusions; filled, once he had begun, with a mania to destroy, +a savage determination to leave nothing,--to level all . . . . + +And now, save for the less frequent relapsing moods, he had grown +strangely unconcerned about his future, content to live in the presence +of this man; to ignore completely the aspects of a life incomprehensible +to the few, besides Mr. Bentley, who observed it. + +What he now mostly felt was relief, if not a faint self-congratulation +that he had had the courage to go through with it, to know the worst. +And he was conscious even, at times, of a faint reviving sense of freedom +he had not known since the days at Bremerton. If the old dogmas were +false, why should he regret them? He began to see that, once he had +suspected their falsity, not to have investigated were to invite decay; +and he pictured himself growing more unctuous, apologetic, plausible. +He had, at any rate, escaped the more despicable fate, and if he went to +pieces now it would be as a man, looking the facts in the face,--not as +a coward and a hypocrite. + +Late one afternoon, when he dropped in at Mr. Bentley's house, he was +informed by Sam that a lady was awaiting Mr. Bentley in the library. +As Hodder opened the door he saw a tall, slim figure of a woman with her +back toward him. She was looking at the photographs on the mantel. + +It was Alison Parr! + +He remembered now that she had asked for Mr. Bentley's number, but it had +never occurred to him that he might one day find her here. And as she +turned he surprised in her eyes a shyness he had never seen in them +before. Thus they stood gazing at each other a moment before either +spoke. + +"Oh, I thought you were Mr. Bentley," she said. + +"Have you been waiting long?" he asked. + +"Three quarters of an hour, but I haven't minded it. This is such an +interesting room, with its pictures and relics and books. It has a +soothing effect, hasn't it? To come here is like stepping out of the +turmoil of the modern world into a peaceful past." + +He was struck by the felicity of her description. + +"You have been here before?" he asked. + +"Yes." She settled herself in the armchair; and Hodder, accepting the +situation, took the seat beside her. "Of course I came, after I had found +out who Mr. Bentley was. The opportunity to know him again--was not to +be missed." + +"I can understand that," he assented. + +"That is, if a child can even be said to know such a person as Mr. +Bentley. Naturally, I didn't appreciate him in those days--children +merely accept, without analyzing. And I have not yet been able to +analyze,--I can only speculate and consider." + +Her enthusiasm never failed to stir and excite Hodder. Nor would he have +thought it possible that a new value could be added to Mr. Bentley in his +eyes. Yet so it was. + +He felt within him, as she spoke, the quickening of a stimulus. + +"When I came in a little while ago," Alison continued, "I found a woman +in black, with such a sweet, sad face. We began a conversation. She had +been through a frightful experience. Her husband had committed suicide, +her child had been on the point of death, and she says that she lies +awake nights now thinking in terror of what might have happened to her +if you and Mr. Bentley hadn't helped her. She's learning to be a +stenographer. Do you remember her?--her name is Garvin." + +"Did she say--anything more?" Hodder anxiously demanded. + +"No," said Alison, surprised by his manner, "except that Mr. Bentley had +found her a place to live, near the hospital, with a widow who was a +friend of his. And that the child was well, and she could look life in +the face again. Oh, it is terrible to think that people all around us +are getting into such straits, and that we are so indifferent to it!" + +Hodder did not speak at once. He was wondering, now that she had renewed +her friendship with Mr. Bentley, whether certain revelations on her part +were not inevitable . . . . + +She was regarding him, and he was aware that her curiosity was aflame. +Again he wondered whether it were curiosity or--interest. + +"You did not tell me, when we met in the Park, that you were no longer +at St. John's." + +Did Mr. Bentley tell you?" + +"No. He merely said he saw a great deal of you. Martha Preston told me. +She is still here, and goes to church occasionally. She was much +surprised to learn that you were in the city. + +"I am still living in the parish house," he said. "I am--taking my +vacation." + +"With Mr. Bentley?" Her eyes were still on his face. + +"With Mr. Bentley," he replied. + +He had spoken without bitterness. Although there had indeed been +bitterness in his soul, it passed away in the atmosphere of Mr. Bentley's +house. The process now taking place in him was the same complication of +negative and positive currents he had felt in her presence before. He +was surprised to find that his old antipathy to agnosticism held over, +in her case; to discover, now, that he was by no means, as yet, in view +of the existence of Horace Bentley, to go the full length of unbelief! +On the other hand, he saw that she had divined much of what had happened +to him, and he felt radiating from her a sympathetic understanding which +seemed almost a claim. She had a claim, although he could not have said +of what it was constituted. Their personal relationship bore +responsibilities. It suddenly came over him, in fact, that the two +persons who in all the world were nearest him were herself and Mr. +Bentley! He responded, scarce knowing why he did so, to the positive +current. + +"With Mr. Bentley," he repeated, smiling, and meeting her eyes, "I have +been learning something about the actual conditions of life in a modern +city." + +She bent a little toward him in one of those spontaneous movements that +characterized her. + +"Tell me--what is his life?" she asked. "I have seen so little of it, +and he has told me nothing himself. At first, in the Park, I saw only a +kindly old gentleman, with a wonderful, restful personality, who had been +a dear friend of my mother's. I didn't connect those boys with him. But +since then--since I have been here twice, I have seen other things which +make me wonder how far his influence extends." She paused. + +"I, too, have wondered," said the rector, thoughtfully. "When I met him, +I supposed he were merely living in simple relationships with his +neighbours here in Dalton Street, but by degrees I have discovered that +his relationships are as wide as the city itself. And they have grown +naturally--by radiation, as it were. One incident has led to another, +one act of kindness to another, until now there seems literally no end to +the men and women with whom he is in personal touch, who are ready to do +anything in their power for him at any time. It is an institution, in +fact, wholly unorganized, which in the final analysis is one man. And +there is in it absolutely nothing of that element which has come to be +known as charity." + +Alison listened with parted lips. + +"To give you an example," he went on, gradually be coming fired by his +subject, by her absorption, "since you have mentioned Mrs. Garvin, I will +tell you what happened in that case. It is typical of many. It was a +question of taking care of this woman, who was worn out and crushed, +until she should recover sufficiently to take care of herself. Mr. +Bentley did not need any assistance from me to get the boy into the +hospital--Dr. Jarvis worships him. But the mother. I might possibly +have got her into an institutional home--Mr. Bentley did better than +that, far better. On the day of the funeral we went directly from the +cemetery to the house of a widow who owns a little fruit farm beyond the +Park. Her name is Bledsoe, and it is not an exaggeration to say that her +house, small as it is, contains an endowed room always at Mr. Bentley's +disposal. + +"Mrs. Garvin is there now. She was received as a friend, as a guest +--not as an inmate, a recipient of charity. I shall never forget how that +woman ran out in the sun when she saw us coming, how proud she was to be +able to do this thing, how she ushered us into the little parlour, that +was all swept and polished, and how naturally and warmly she welcomed the +other woman, dazed and exhausted, and took her hat and veil and almost +carried her up the stairs. And later on I found out from Miss Grower, +who lives here, Mrs. Bledsoe's history. Eight or nine years ago her +husband was sent to prison for forgery, and she was left with four small +children, on the verge of a fate too terrible to mention. She was +brought to Mr. Bentley's attention, and he started her in life. + +"And now Mrs. Garvin forms another link to that chain, which goes on +growing. In a month she will be earning her own living as stenographer +for a grain merchant whom Mr. Bentley set on his feet several years ago. +One thing has led to the next. And--I doubt if any neighbourhood could +be mentioned, north or south or west, or even in the business portion +of the city itself, where men and women are not to be found ready and +eager to do anything in their power for him. Of course there have been +exceptions, what might be called failures in the ordinary terminology +of charity, but there are not many." + +When he had finished she sat quite still, musing over what he had told +her, her eyes alight. + +"Yes, it is wonderful," she said at length, in a low voice. "Oh, I can +believe in that, making the world a better place to live in, making +people happier. Of course every one cannot be like Mr. Bentley, but all +may do their share in their own way. If only we could get rid of this +senseless system of government that puts a premium on the acquisition of +property! As it is, we have to depend on individual initiative. Even +the good Mr. Bentley does is a drop in the ocean compared to what might +be done if all this machinery--which has been invented, if all these +discoveries of science, by which the forces of an indifferent nature have +been harnessed, could be turned to the service of all mankind. Think of +how many Mrs. Garvins, of how many Dalton Streets there are in the world, +how many stunted children working in factories or growing up into +criminals in the slums! I was reading a book just the other day on the +effect of the lack of nutrition on character. We are breeding a million +degenerate citizens by starving them, to say nothing of the effect of +disease and bad air, of the constant fear of poverty that haunts the +great majority of homes. There is no reason why that fear should not be +removed, why the latest discoveries in medicine and science should not be +at the disposal of all." + +The genuineness of her passion was unmistakable. His whole being +responded to it. + +"Have you always felt like this?" he asked. Like what?" + +"Indignant--that so many people were suffering." + +His question threw her into reflection. + +"Why, no," she answered, at length, "I never thought----I see what you +mean. Four or five years ago, when I was going to socialist lectures, +my sense of all this--inequality, injustice was intellectual. I didn't +get indignant over it, as I do now when I think of it." + +"And why do you get indignant now?" + +"You mean," she asked, "that I have no right to be indignant, since I do +nothing to attempt to better conditions?--" + +"Not at all," Hodder disavowed. "Perhaps my question is too personal, +but I didn't intend it to be. I was merely wondering whether any event +or series of events had transformed a mere knowledge of these conditions +into feeling." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, but not in offence. Once more she relapsed into +thought. And as he watched her, in silence, the colour that flowed and +ebbed in her cheeks registered the coming and going of memories; of +incidents in her life hidden from him, arousing in the man the torture +of jealousy. But his faculties, keenly alert, grasped the entire field; +marked once more the empirical trait in her that he loved her unflinching +willingness to submit herself to an experiment. + +"I suppose so," she replied at length, her thoughts naturally assuming +speech. "Yes, I can see that it is so. Yet my experience has not been +with these conditions with which Mr. Bentley, with which you have been +brought in contact, but with the other side--with luxury. Oh, I am sick +of luxury! I love it, I am not at all sure that I could do without it, +but I hate it, too, I rebel against it. You can't understand that." + +"I think I can," he answered her. + +"When I see the creatures it makes," she cried, "I hate it. My +profession has brought me in such close contact with it that I rebelled +at last, and came out here very suddenly, just to get away from it in the +mass. To renew my youth, if I could. The gardens were only an excuse. +I had come to a point where I wanted to be quiet, to be alone, to think, +and I knew my father would be going away. So much of my girlhood was +spent in that Park that I know every corner of it, and I--obeyed the +impulse. I wanted to test it." + +"Yes," he said, absorbed. + +"I might have gone to the mountains or the sea, but some one would have +come and found me, and I should have been bound again--on the wheel. +I shouldn't have had the strength to resist. But here--have you ever +felt," she demanded, "that you craved a particular locality at a certain +time?" + +He followed her still. + +"That is how I felt. These associations, that Park, the thought of my +girlhood, of my mother, who understood me as no one else has since, +assumed a certain value. New York became unbearable. It is just +there, in the very centre of our modern civilization, that one sees +the crudest passions. Oh, I have often wondered whether a man, however +disillusioned, could see New York as a woman sees it when the glamour is +gone. We are the natural prey of the conqueror still. We dream of +independence--" + +She broke off abruptly. + +This confession, with the sudden glimpse it gave him of the fires within +her that would not die down, but burned now more fiercely than ever, +sent the blood to his head. His face, his temples, were hot with the +fierceness of his joy in his conviction that she had revealed herself to +him. Why she had done so, he could not say. . . This was the woman +whom the world thought composed; who had triumphed over its opposition, +compelled it to bow before her; who presented to it that self-possessed, +unified personality by which he had been struck at their first meeting. +Yet, paradoxically, the personality remained,--was more elusive than +before. A thousand revelations, he felt, would not disclose it. + +He was no nearer to solving it now. . Yet the fires burned! She, too, +like himself, was aflame and unsatisfied! She, too, had tasted success, +and had revolted! + +"But I don't get anywhere," she said wearily. "At times I feel this +ferment, this anger that things are as they are, only to realize what +helpless anger it is. Why not take the world as it appears and live and +feel, instead of beating against the currents?" + +"But isn't that inconsistent with what you said awhile ago as to a new +civilization?" Hodder asked. + +"Oh, that Utopia has no reality for me. I think it has, at moments, but +it fades. And I don't pretend to be consistent. Mr. Bentley lives in a +world of his own; I envy him with all my heart, I love and admire him, +he cheers and soothes me when I am with him. But I can't see--whatever +he sees. I am only aware of a remorseless universe grinding out its +destinies. We Anglo-Saxons are fond of deceiving ourselves about life, +of dressing it up in beautiful colours, of making believe that it +actually contains happiness. All our fiction reflects this--that is +why I never cared to read English or American novels. The Continental +school, the Russians, the Frenchmen, refuse to be deluded. They are +honest." + +"Realism, naturalism," he mused, recalling a course in philosophy, "one +would expect the Russian, in the conditions under which he lives, +possessing an artistic temperament combined with a paralysis of the +initiative and a sense of fate, to write in that way. And the Frenchmen, +Renan, Zola, and the others who have followed, are equally deterministic, +but viewing the human body as a highly organized machine with which we +may amuse ourselves by registering its sensations. These literatures are +true in so far as they reflect the characteristics of the nations from +which they spring. That is not to say that the philosophies of which +they are the expressions are true. Nor is it to admit that such a +literature is characteristic of the spirit of America, and can be applied +without change to our life and atmosphere. We have yet, I believe, to +develop our own literature; which will come gradually as we find +ourselves." + +"Find ourselves?" she repeated. + +"Yes. Isn't that what we are trying to do? We are not determinists or +fatalists, and to condemn us to such a philosophy would be to destroy us. +We live on hope. In spite of our apparent materialism, we are idealists. +And is it not possible to regard nature as governed by laws--remorseless, +if you like the word--and yet believe, with Kant and Goethe, that there +is an inner realm? You yourself struggle--you cling to ideals." + +"Ideals!" she echoed. "Ideals are useless unless one is able to see, to +feel something beyond this ruthless mechanism by which we are surrounded +and hemmed in, to have some perception of another scheme. Why struggle, +unless we struggle for something definite? Oh, I don't mean heavenly +rewards. Nothing could be more insipid and senseless than the orthodox +view of the hereafter. I am talking about a scheme of life here and +now." + +"So am I," answered Hodder. "But may there not be a meaning in this very +desire we have to struggle against the order of things as it appears to +us?" + +"A meaning?" + +"A little while ago you spoke of your indignation at the inequalities and +injustices of the world, and when I asked you if you had always felt +this, you replied that this feeling had grown upon you. My question is +this: whether that indignation would be present at all if it were not +meant to be turned into action." + +"You believe that an influence is at work, an influence that impels us +against our reason?" + +"I should like to think so," he said. "Why should so many persons be +experiencing such a feeling to-day, persons who, like yourself, are the +beneficiaries of our present system of privilege? Why should you, who +have every reason to be satisfied, materially, with things as they are, +be troubling yourself with thoughts of others who are less-fortunate? +And why should we have the spectacle, today, of men and women all over +this country in social work, in science and medicine and politics, +striving to better conditions while most of them might be much more +comfortable and luxurious letting well enough alone?" + +"But it's human to care," she objected. + +"Ah--human!" he said, and was silent. "What do we mean by human, unless +it is the distinguishing mark of something within us that the natural +world doesn't possess? Unless it is the desire and willingness to strive +for a larger interest than the individual interest, work and suffer for +others? And you spoke of making people happier. What do you mean by +happiness? Not merely the possession of material comforts, surely. I +grant you that those who are overworked and underfed, who are burning +with the consciousness of wrongs, who have no outlook ahead, are +essentially hopeless and miserable. But by 'happiness' you, mean +something more than the complacency and contentment which clothing and +food might bring, and the removal of the economic fear,--and even the +restoration of self-respect." + +"That their lives should be fuller!" she exclaimed. + +"That drudgery and despair should be replaced by interest and hope," he +went on, "slavery by freedom. In other words, that the whole attitude +toward life should be changed, that life should appear a bright thing +rather than a dark thing, that labour should be willing vicarious instead +of forced and personal. Otherwise, any happiness worth having is out of +the question." + +She was listening now with parted lips, apparently unconscious of the +fixity of her gaze. + +"You mean it is a choice between that or nothing," she said, in a low +voice. "That there is no use in lifting people out of the treadmill +--and removing the terror of poverty unless you can give them something +more--than I have got." + +"And something more--than I have got,"--he was suddenly moved to reply... + +Presently, while the silence still held between them, the door opened and +startled them into reality. Mr. Bentley came in. + +The old gentleman gave no sign, as they rose to meet him, of a sense of +tension in the atmosphere he had entered--yet each felt--somehow, that he +knew. The tension was released. The same thought occurred to both as +they beheld the peaceful welcome shining in his face, "Here is what we +are seeking. Why try to define it?" + +"To think that I have been gossiping with Mrs. Meyer, while you were +waiting for me!" he said. "She keeps the little florist's shop at the +corner of Tower Street, and she gave me these. I little guessed what +good use I should have for them, my dear." + +He held out to her three fragrant, crimson roses that matched the +responsive colour in her cheeks as she thanked him and pinned them on her +gown. He regarded her an instant. + +"But I'm sure Mr. Hodder has entertained you," Mr. Bentley turned, and +laid his hand on the rector's shoulder. + +"Most successfully," said Alison, cutting short his protest. And she +smiled at Hodder, faintly. + + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM + + +I + +Hodder, in spite of a pressing invitation to remain for supper, had left +them together. He turned his face westward, in the opposite direction +from the parish house, still under the spell of that moment of communion +which had lasted--he knew not how long, a moment of silent revelation to +them both. She, too, was storm-tossed! She, too, who had fared forth so +gallantly into life, had conquered only to be beaten down--to lose her +way. + +This discovery strained the very fibres of his being. So close he had +been to her--so close that each had felt, simultaneously, complete +comprehension of the other, comprehension that defied words, overbore +disagreements. He knew that she had felt it. He walked on at first in a +bewildered ecstasy, careless of aught else save that in a moment they two +had reached out in the darkness and touched hands. Never had his +experience known such communion, never had a woman meant what this woman +meant, and yet he could not define that meaning. What need of religion, +of faith in an unseen order when this existed? To have this woman in the +midst of chaos would be enough! + +Faith in an unseen order! As he walked, his mind returned to the +argument by which he had sought to combat her doubts--and his own. +Whence had the argument come? It was new to him--he had never formulated +it before--that pity and longing and striving were a justification and a +proof. Had she herself inspired, by some unknown psychological law, this +first attempt of his to reform the universe, this theory which he had +rather spoken than thought? Or had it been the knowledge of her own +longing, and his desire to assuage it? As twilight fell, as his spirits +ebbed, he could not apply it now--it meant nothing to him, evaded him, +there was in it no solace. To regain his footing once more, to climb +again without this woman whom he needed, and might not have! Better to +fall, to be engulfed. . . The vision of her, tall and straight, with +the roses on her breast, tortured him. + +Thus ecstasy ebbed to despondency. He looked around him in the fading +day, to find himself opposite the closed gates of the Botanical Gardens, +in the southwestern portion of the city . . . . An hour later he had +made his way back to Dalton Street with its sputtering blue lights and +gliding figures, and paused for a moment on the far sidewalk to gaze at +Mr. Bentley's gleaming windows. Should he go in? Had that personality +suddenly lost its power over him? How strange that now he could see +nothing glowing, nothing inspiring within that house,--only a kindly old +man reading a newspaper! + +He walked on, slowly, to feel stealing on him that desperate longing for +adventure which he had known so well in his younger days. And he did not +resist. The terror with which it had once inspired him was gone, or +lingered only in the form of a delicious sense of uncertainty and +anticipation. Anything might happen to him--anything would be grateful; +the thought of his study in the parish house was unbearable; the Dalton +Street which had mocked and repelled him suddenly became alluring with +its champaigns of light and inviting stretches of darkness. In the block +ahead, rising out of the night like a tower blazing with a hundred +beacons, Hodder saw a hotel, heard the faint yet eager throbbing of +music, beheld silhouetted figures flitting from automobiles and carriages +across the white glare of the pavement,--figures of men and women. + +He hastened his steps, the music grew louder and louder in his ears, he +gained the ornamental posts crowned by their incandescent globes, made +his way through the loiterers, descended the stone steps of the +restaurant, and stood staring into it as at a blurred picture. The band +crashed a popular two-step above the mingled voices and laughter. He sat +down at a vacant table near the door, and presently became aware that a +waiter had been for some time at his elbow. + +"What will you have, sir?" + +Then he remembered that he had not eaten, discovered that he was hungry, +and ordered some sandwiches and beer. Still staring, the figures began +to differentiate themselves, although they all appeared, somehow, in +perpetual motion; hurrying, though seated. It was like gazing at a +quivering cinematograph. Here and there ribbons of smoke curled upward, +adding volume to the blue cloud that hung over the tables, which in turn +was dissipated in spots by the industrious electric fans. Everywhere he +looked he met the glances of women; even at the table next him, they were +not so absorbed in their escorts as to be able to resist flinging +him covert stares between the shrieks of laughter in which they +intermittently indulged. The cumulative effect of all these faces was +intoxicating, and for a long time he was unable to examine closely any +one group. What he saw was a composite woman with flushed cheeks and +soliciting eyes, becomingly gowned and hatted--to the masculine judgment. +On the walls, heavily frescoed in the German style, he read, in Gothic +letters: + + "Wer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, and Gesang, + Er bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang." + +The waiter brought the sandwiches and beer, yet he did not eat. In the +middle distance certain figures began insistently to stand out,--figures +of women sitting alone wherever he looked he met a provoking gaze. One +woman, a little farther away than the rest, seemed determinedly bent on +getting a nod of recognition, and it was gradually borne in upon Hodder's +consciousness that her features were familiar. In avoiding her eyes he +studied the men at the next table,--or rather one of them, who loudly +ordered the waiters about, who told brief anecdotes that were +uproariously applauded; whose pudgy, bejewelled fingers were continually +feeling for the bottle in the ice beside his chair, or nudging his +companions with easy familiarity; whose little eyes, set in a heavy face, +lighted now and again with a certain expression . . . . . + +Suddenly Hodder pushed back his chair and got to his feet, overcome by a +choking sensation like that of being, asphyxiated by foul gases. He must +get out at once, or faint. What he had seen in the man's eyes had +aroused in him sheer terror, for it was the image of something in his +own soul which had summarily gained supremacy and led him hither, +unresisting, to its own abiding-place. In vain he groped to reconstruct +the process by which that other spirit--which he would fain have believed +his true spirit--had been drugged and deadened in its very flight. + +He was aware, as he still stood uncertainly beside the table, of the +white-aproned waiter looking at him, and of some one else!--the woman +whose eyes had been fastened on him so persistently. She was close +beside him, speaking to him. + +"Seems to me we've met before." + +He looked at her, at first uncomprehendingly, then with a dawning +realization of her identity. Even her name came to him, unexpectedly, +--Kate Marcy,--the woman in the flat! + +"Ain't you going to invite me to have some supper?" she whispered +eagerly, furtively, as one accustomed to be rebuffed, yet bold in spite +of it. "They'll throw me out if they think I'm accosting you." + +How was it that, a moment ago, she had appeared to him mysterious, +inviting? At this range he could only see the paint on her cheeks, the +shadows under her burning eyes, the shabby finery of her gown. Her +wonderful bronze hair only made the contrast more pitiful. He acted +automatically, drawing out for her the chair opposite his own, and sat +down again. + +"Say, but I'm hungry!" she exclaimed, pulling off her gloves. She smiled +at him, wanly, yet with a brazen coquettishness become habit. + +"Hungry!" he repeated idly. + +"I guess you'd be, if you'd only had a fried egg and a cup of coffee +to-day, and nothing last night." + +He pushed over to her, hastily, with a kind of horror, the plate of +sandwiches. She began eating them ravenously; but presently paused, and +thrust them back toward him. He shook his head. + +"What's the matter with you?" she demanded. + +"Nothing," he replied. + +"You ordered them, didn't you? Ain't you eating anything?" + +"I'm not hungry," he said. + +She continued eating awhile without comment. And he watched her as one +fascinated, oblivious to his surroundings, in a turmoil of thought and +emotion. + +"I'm dry," she announced meaningly. + +He hesitated a moment, and then gave her the bottle of beer. She made a +wry face as she poured it out. + +"Have they run out of champagne?" she inquired. + +This time he did not hesitate. The women of his acquaintance, at the +dinner parties he attended, drank champagne. Why should he refuse it to +this woman? A long-nosed, mediaeval-looking waiter was hovering about, +one of those bizarre, battered creatures who have long exhausted the +surprises of life, presiding over this amazing situation with all the +sang froid of a family butler. Hodder told him to bring champagne. + +"What kind, sir?" he asked, holding out a card. + +"The best you have." + +The woman stared at him in wonder. + +"You're what an English Johnny I know would call a little bit of all +right!" she declared with enthusiastic approval. + +"Since you are hungry," he went on, "suppose you have something more +substantial than sandwiches. What would you like?" + +She did not answer at once. Amazement grew in her eyes, amazement and a +kind of fear. + +"Quit joshing!" she implored him, and he found it difficult to cope with +her style of conversation. For a while she gazed helplessly at the bill +of fare. + +"I guess you'll think it's funny," she said hesitatingly, "but I feel +just like a good beefsteak and potatoes. Bring a thick one, Walter." + +The waiter sauntered off. + +"Why should I think it strange?" Hodder asked. + +"Well, if you knew how many evenings I've sat up there in my room and +thought what I'd order if I ever again got hold of some rich guy who'd +loosen up. There ain't any use trying to put up a bluff with you. +Nothing was too good for me once, caviar, pate de foie gras" (her +pronunciation is not to be imitated), "chicken casserole, peach Melba, +filet of beef with mushrooms,--I've had 'em all, and I used to sit up and +say I'd hand out an order like that. You never do what you think you're +going to do in this life." + +The truth of this remark struck him with a force she did not suspect; +stung him, as it were, into a sense of reality. + +"And now," she added pathetically, "all t want is a beefsteak! Don't +that beat you?" + +She appeared so genuinely surprised at this somewhat contemptible trick +fate had played her that Hodder smiled in spite of himself. + +"I didn't recognize you at first in that get-up," she observed, looking +at his blue serge suit. "So you've dropped the preacher business, have +you? You're wise, all right." + +"Why do you say that?" he asked. + +"Didn't I tell you when you came 'round that time that you weren't like +the rest of 'em? You're too human." + +Once more the word, and on her lips, startled him. + +"Some of the best men I have ever known, the broadest and most +understanding men, have been clergymen," he found himself protesting. + +"Well, they haven't dropped in on me. The only one I ever saw that +measured up to something like that was you, and now you've chucked it." + +Had he, as she expressed the matter, "chucked it"? Her remark brought +him reluctantly, fearfully, remorselessly--agitated and unprepared as +he was--face to face with his future. + +"You were too good for the job," she declared. "What is there in it? +There ain't nobody converted these days that I can see, and what's the +use of gettin' up and preach into a lot of sapheads that don't know what +religion is? Sure they don't." + +"Do you?" he asked. + +"You've called my bluff." She laughed. "Say, do YOU?" If there was +anything in it you'd have kept on preachin' to that bunch and made some +of 'em believe they was headed for hell; you'd have made one of 'em that +owns the flat house I live in, who gets fancy rents out of us poor girls, +give it up. That's a nice kind of business for a church member, ain't +it?" + +"Owns the house in which you live!" + +"Sure." She smiled at him compassionately, pitying his innocence and +ignorance. "Now I come to think of it, I guess he don't go to your +church,--it's the big Baptist church on the boulevard. But what's the +difference?" + +"None," said Hodder, despondently. + +She regarded him curiously. + +"You remember when you dropped in that night, when the kid was sick?" + +He nodded. + +"Well, now you ain't in the business any more, I may as well tell you you +kind of got in on me. I was sorry for you--honest, I was. I couldn't +believe at first you was on the level, but it didn't take me long to see +that they had gold-bricked you, too. I saw you weren't wise to what they +were." + +"You thought--" he began and paused dumfounded. + +"Why not?" she retorted. "It looked easy to me,--your line. How was I +to know at first that they had you fooled? How was I to know you wasn't +in the game?" + +"The game?" + +"Say, what else is it but a game? You must be on now, ain't you? Why. +do they put up to keep the churches going? There ain't any coupons +coming out of 'em. + +"Maybe some of these millionaires think they can play all the horses and +win,--get into heaven and sell gold bricks on the side. But I guess most +of 'em don't think about heaven. They just use the church for a front, +and take in strangers in the back alley,--downtown." + +Hodder was silent, overwhelmed by the brutal aptness of her figures. Nor +did he take the trouble of a defence, of pointing out that hers was not +the whole truth. What really mattered--he saw--was what she and those +like her thought. Such minds were not to be disabused by argument; and +indeed he had little inclination for it then. + +"There's nothing in it." + +By this expression he gathered she meant life. And some hidden impulse +bade him smile at her. + +"There is this," he answered. + +She opened her mouth, closed it and stared at him, struck by his +expression, striving uneasily to fathom hidden depths in his remark. + +"I don't get on to you," she said lamely. "I didn't that other time. +I never ran across anybody like you." + +He tried to smile again. + +"You mustn't mind me," he answered. + +They fell into an oasis of silence, surrounded by mad music and laughter. +Then came the long-nosed waiter carrying the beefsteak aloft, followed by +a lad with a bucket of ice, from which protruded the green and gold neck +of a bottle. The plates were put down, the beefsteak carved, the +champagne opened and poured out with a flourish. The woman raised her +glass. + +"Here's how!" she said, with an attempt at gayety. And she drank to him. +"It's funny how I ran across you again, ain't it?" She threw back her +head and laughed. + +He raised his glass, tasted the wine, and put it down again. A sheet of +fire swept through him. + +"What's the matter with it? Is it corked?" she demanded. "It goes to +the right spot with me." + +"It seems very good," he said, trying to smile, and turning to the food +on his plate. The very idea of eating revolted him--and yet he made the +attempt: he had a feeling, ill defined, that consequences of vital +importance depended upon this attempt, on his natural acceptance of the +situation. And, while he strove to reduce the contents of his plate, +he racked his brain for some subject of conversation. The flamboyant +walls of the room pressed in on every side; comment of that which lay +within their limits was impossible,--but he could not, somehow, get +beyond them. Was there in the whole range of life one easy topic which +they might share in common? Yet a bond existed between this woman and +himself--a bond of which he now became aware, and which seemed strangely +to grow stronger as the minutes passed and no words were spoken. Why was +it that she, too, to whom speech came so easily, had fallen dumb? He +began to long for some remark, however disconcerting. The tension +increased. + +She put down her knife and fork. Tears sprang into her eyes,--tears of +anger, he thought. + +"Say, it's no use trying to put up a bluff with me," she cried. + +"Why do you say that?" he asked. + +"You know what I mean, all right. What did you come in here for, +anyway?" + +"I don't know--I couldn't tell you," he answered. + +The very honesty of his words seemed, for an instant, to disconcert her; +and she produced a torn lace handkerchief, which she thrust in her eyes. + +"Why can't you leave me alone?" she demanded. "I'm all right." + +If he did not at once reply, it was because of some inner change which +had taken place in himself; and he seemed to see things, suddenly, in +their true proportions. He no longer feared a scene and its +consequences. By virtue of something he had cast off or taken on, +he was aware of a newly acquired mastery of the situation, and by a +hidden and unconscious process he had managed to get at the real woman +behind the paint: had beaten down, as it were without a siege, her +defences. And he was incomparably awed by the sight of her quivering, +frightened self. + +Her weeping grew more violent. He saw the people at the next table turn +and stare, heard the men laughing harshly. For the spectacle was +evidently not an uncommon one here. She pushed away her unfinished +glass, gathered up her velvet bag and rose abruptly. + +"I guess I ain't hungry after all," she said, and started toward the +door. He turned to the waiter, who regarded him unmoved, and asked for a +check. + +"I'll get it," he said. + +Hodder drew out a ten dollar bill, and told him to keep the change. The +waiter looked at him. Some impulse moved him to remark, as he picked up +the rector's hat: + +"Don't let her put it over you, sir." + +Hodder scarcely heard him. He hurried up the steps and gained the +pavement, and somewhere in the black shadows beyond the arc-lights he saw +her disappearing down the street. Careless of all comment he hastened +on, overtook her, and they walked rapidly side by side. Now and again he +heard a sob, but she said nothing. Thus they came to the house where the +Garvins had lived, and passed it, and stopped in front of the dimly +lighted vestibule of the flats next door. In drawing the key from her +bag she dropped it: he picked it up and put it in the lock himself. She +led the way without comment up the darkened stairs, and on the landing +produced another key, opened the door of her rooms, fumbled for the +electric button, and suddenly the place was flooded with light. He +glanced in, and recoiled. + + + +II + +Oddly enough, the first thing he noticed in the confusion that reigned +was the absence of the piano. Two chairs were overturned, and one of +them was broken; a siphon of vichy lay on the floor beside a crushed +glass and two or three of the cheap ornaments that had been swept off +the mantel and broken on the gaudy tiles of the hearth. He glanced at +the woman, who had ceased crying, and stood surveying the wreckage with +the calmness, the philosophic nonchalance of a class that comes to look +upon misfortune as inevitable. + +"They didn't do a thing to this place, did they?" was her comment. +"There was two guys in here to-night who got a notion they were funny." + +Hodder had thought to have fathomed all the horrors of her existence, but +it was not until he looked into this room that the bottomless depths of +it were brought home to him. Could it be possible that the civilization +in which he lived left any human being so defenceless as to be at the +mercy of the ghouls who had been here? The very stale odours of the +spilled whiskey seemed the material expression of the essence of degraded +souls; for a moment it overpowered him. Then came the imperative need of +action, and he began to right one of the chairs. She darted forward. + +"Cut it out!" she cried. "What business have you got coming in here and +straightening up? I was a fool to bring you, anyway." + +It was in her eyes that he read her meaning, and yet could not credit it. +He was abashed--ashamed; nay, he could not define the feeling in his +breast. He knew that what he read was the true interpretation of her +speech, for in some manner--he guessed not how--she had begun to idealize +him, to feel that the touch of these things defiled him. + +"I believe I invited myself," he answered, with attempted cheerfulness. +Then it struck him, in his predicament, that this was precisely what +others had done! + +"When you asked me a little while ago whether I had left the Church, I +let you think I had. I am still connected with St. John's, but I do not +know how long I shall continue to be." + +She was on her knees with dustpan and whiskbroom, cleaning up the +fragments of glass on the stained carpet. And she glanced up at him +swiftly, diviningly. + +"Say--you're in trouble yourself, ain't you?" + +She got up impulsively, spilling some of the contents of the pan. A +subtle change had come in her, and under the gallantly drooping feathers +of her hat he caught her eye--the human eye that so marvellously reflects +the phases of the human soul: the eye which so short a time before +hardily and brazenly had flashed forth its invitation, now actually shone +with fellowship and sympathy. And for a moment this look was more +startling, more appalling than the other; he shrank from it, resented it +even more. Was it true that they had something in common? And if so, +was it sin or sorrow, or both? + +"I might have known," she said, staring at him. In spite of his gesture +of dissent, he saw that she was going over the events of the evening from +her new point of view. + +"I might have known, when we were sitting there in Harrods, that you were +up against it, too, but I couldn't think of anything but the way I was +fixed. The agent's been here twice this week for the rent, and I was +kind of desperate for a square meal." + +Hodder took the dustpan from her hand, and flung its contents into the +fireplace. + +"Then we are both fortunate," he said, "to have met each other." + +"I don't see where you come in," she told him. + +He turned and smiled at her. + +"Do you remember when I was here that evening about two months ago I said +I should like to be your friend? Well, I meant it. And I have often +hoped, since then, that some circumstance might bring us together again. +You seemed to think that no friendship was possible between us, but I +have tried to make myself believe that you said so because you didn't +know me." + +"Honest to God?" she asked. "Is that on the level?" + +"I only ask for an opportunity to prove it," he replied, striving to +speak naturally. He stooped and laid the dustpan on the hearth. +"There! Now let's sit down." + +She sank on the sofa, her breast rising and falling, her gaze dumbly +fixed on him, as one under hypnosis. He took the rocker. + +"I have wanted to tell you how grateful Mrs. Garvin, the boy's mother +--was for the roses you brought. She doesn't know who sent them, but I +intend to tell her, and she will thank you herself. She is living out +in the country. And the boy--you would scarcely recognize him." + +"I couldn't play the piano for a week after--that thing happened." She +glanced at the space where the instrument had stood. + +"You taught yourself to play?" he asked. + +"I had music lessons." + +"Music lessons?" + +"Not here--before I left home--up the State, in a little country town, +--Madison. It seems like a long time ago, but it's only seven years in +September. Mother and father wanted all of us children to know a little +more than they did, and I guess they pinched a good deal to give us a +chance. I went a year to the high school, and then I was all for coming +to the city--I couldn't stand Madison, there wasn't anything going on. +Mother was against it,--said I was too good-looking to leave home. I +wish I never had. You wouldn't believe I was good-looking once, would +you?" + +She spoke dispassionately, not seeming to expect assent, but Hodder +glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off +her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,--and +suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped +the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which she now lived. + +"I was a fool to come, but I couldn't see it then. All I could think of +was to get away to a place where something was happening. I wanted to +get into Ferguson's--everybody in Madison knew about Ferguson's, what a +grand store it was,--but I couldn't. And after a while I got a place at +the embroidery counter at Pratt's. That's a department store, too, you +know. It looked fine, but it wasn't long before I fell wise to a few +things." (She relapsed into slang occasionally.) "Have you ever tried +to stand on your feet for nine hours, where you couldn't sit down for a +minute? Say, when Florry Kinsley and me--she was the girl I roomed with +--would get home at night, often we'd just lie down and laugh and cry, we +were so tired, and our feet hurt so. We were too used up sometimes to +get up and cook supper on the little stove we had. And sitting around a +back bedroom all evening was worse than Madison. We'd go out, tired as +we were, and walk the streets." + +He nodded, impressed by the fact that she did not seem to be appealing +to his sympathy. Nor, indeed, did she appear--in thus picking up the +threads of her past--to be consciously accounting for her present. +She recognized no causation there. + +"Say, did you ever get to a place where you just had to have something +happen? When you couldn't stand bein' lonely night after night, when you +went out on the streets and saw everybody on the way to a good time but +you? We used to look in the newspapers for notices of the big balls, and +we'd take the cars to the West End and stand outside the awnings watching +the carriages driving up and the people coming in. And the same with +the weddings. We got to know a good many of the swells by sight. There +was Mrs. Larrabbee,"--a certain awe crept into her voice--"and Miss +Ferguson--she's sweet--and a lot more. Some of the girls used to copy +their clothes and hats, but Florry and me tried to live honest. It was +funny," she added irrelevantly, "but the more worn out we were at night, +the more we'd want a little excitement, and we used to go to the +dance-halls and keep going until we were ready to drop." + +She laughed at the recollection. + +"There was a floorwalker who never let me alone the whole time I was at +Pratt's--he put me in mind of a pallbearer. His name was Selkirk, and he +had a family in Westerly, out on the Grade Suburban . . . . Some of +the girls never came back at all, except to swagger in and buy expensive +things, and tell us we were fools to work. And after a while I noticed +Florry was getting discouraged. We never had so much as a nickel left +over on Saturdays and they made us sign a paper, when they hired us, that +we lived at home. It was their excuse for paying us six dollars a week. +They do it at Ferguson's, too. They say they can get plenty of girls who +do live at home. I made up my mind I'd go back to Madison, but I kept +putting it off, and then father died, and I couldn't! + +"And then, one day, Florry left. She took her things from the room when +I was at the store, and I never saw her again. I got another roommate. +I couldn't afford to pay for the room alone. You wouldn't believe I kept +straight, would you?" she demanded, with a touch of her former defiance. +"I had plenty of chances better than that floorwalker. But I knew I was +good looking, and I thought if I could only hold out I might get married +to some fellow who was well fixed. What's the matter?" + +Hodder's exclamation had been involuntary, for in these last words she +had unconsciously brought home to him the relentless predicament in the +lives of these women. She had been saving herself--for what? A more +advantageous, sale! + +"It's always been my luck," she went on reflectingly, "that when what I +wanted to happen did happen, I never could take advantage of it. It was +just like that to-night, when you handed me out the bill of fare, and +I ordered beefsteak. And it was like that when--when he came along +--I didn't do what I thought I was going to do. It's terrible to fall in +love, isn't it? I mean the real thing. I've read in books that it only +comes once, and I guess it's so." + +Fortunately she seemed to expect no answer to this query. She was +staring at the wall with unseeing eyes. + +"I never thought of marrying him, from the first. He could have done +anything with me--he was so good and generous--and it was him I was +thinking about. That's love, isn't it? Maybe you don't believe a woman +like me knows what love is. You've got a notion that goin' downhill, as +I've been doing, kills it, haven't you? I Wish to God it did--but it +don't: the ache's there, and sometimes it comes in the daytime, and +sometimes at night, and I think I'll go crazy. When a woman like me is +in love there isn't anything more terrible on earth, I tell you. If a +girl's respectable and good it's bad enough, God knows, if she can't have +the man she wants; but when she's like me--it's hell. That's the only +way I can describe it. She feels there is nothing about her that's +clean, that he wouldn't despise. There's many a night I wished I could +have done what Garvin did, but I didn't have the nerve." + +"Don't say that!" he commanded sharply. + +"Why not? It's the best way out." + +"I can see how one might believe it to be," he answered. Indeed, it +seemed that his vision had been infinitely extended, that he had suddenly +come into possession of the solution of all the bewildered, despairing +gropings of the human soul. Only awhile ago, for instance, the mood of +self-destruction had been beyond his imagination: tonight he understood +it, though he still looked upon it with horror. And he saw that his +understanding of her--or of any human being--could never be of the +intellect. He had entered into one of those astounding yet simple +relationships wherein truth, and truth alone, is possible. He knew +that such women lied, deceived themselves; he could well conceive that +the image of this first lover might have become idealized in her +vicissitudes; that the memories of the creature-comforts, of first +passion, might have enhanced as the victim sank. It was not only +because she did not attempt to palliate that he believed her. + +"I remember the time I met him,--it was only four years ago last spring, +but it seems like a lifetime. It was Decoration Day, and it was so +beautiful I went out with another girl to the Park, and we sat on the +grass and looked at the sky and wished we lived in the country. He was +in an automobile; I never did know exactly how it happened,--we looked at +each other, and he slowed up and came back and asked us to take a ride. +I had never been in one of those things--but that wasn't why I went, +I guess. Well, the rest was easy. He lost his head, and I was just as +bad. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how rich he was: it scared me +when I found out about him, and he was so handsome and full of fun and +spirits, and generous! I never knew anybody like him. Honest, I never +expected he'd want to marry me. He didn't at first,--it was only after +a while. I never asked him to, and when he began to talk about it I told +him it would cut him off from his swell friends, and I knew his father +might turn him loose. Oh, it wasn't the money! Well, he'd get mad all +through, and say he never got along with the old man, and that his +friends would have to take me, and he couldn't live without me. He said +he would have me educated, and bought me books, and I tried to read them. +I'd have done anything for him. He'd knocked around a good deal since +he'd been to Harvard College,--he wasn't what you'd call a saint, but his +heart was all right. And he changed, too, I could see it. He said he +was going to make something out of himself. + +"I didn't think it was possible to be so happy, but I had a feeling all +along, inside of me, that it couldn't come off. I had a little flat in +Rutger Street, over on the south side, and everything in the world I +wanted. Well, one day, sure enough, the bell rang and I opened the door, +and there stood a man with side whiskers staring at me, and staring until +I was frightened to death. I never saw such eyes as he had. And all of +a sudden I knew it was his father. + +"'Is this Miss Marcy?'" he said. + +"I couldn't say anything at all, but he handed me his card and smiled, +I'll never forget how he smiled--and came right in and sat down. I'd +heard of that man all my life, and how much money he'd made, and all +that. Why, up in Madison folks used to talk about him--" she checked +herself suddenly and stared at Hodder in consternation. "Maybe you know +him!" she exclaimed. "I never thought!" + +"Maybe I do," he assented wearily. In the past few moments suspicion had +become conviction. + +"Well--what difference does it make--now? It's all over, and I'm not +going to bother him. I made up my mind I wouldn't, on account of him, +you understand. I never fell that low--thank God!" + +Hodder nodded. He could not speak . . . . The woman seemed to be +living over again that scene, in her imagination. + +"I just couldn't realize who it was sitting there beside me, but if I +hadn't known it wouldn't have made any difference. He could have done +anything with me, anyway, and he knew how to get at me. He said, now +that he'd seen me, that he was sure I was a good girl at the bottom and +loved his son, and that I wouldn't want to ruin the boy when he had such +a big future ahead of him. I wouldn't have thought, to look at the man, +that he could have been so gentle. I made a fool of myself and cried, +and told him I'd go away and never see his son any more--that I'd always +been against marrying him. Well, he almost had tears in his eyes when he +thanked me and said I'd never regret it, and he pulled an envelope out of +his pocket. I said I wouldn't take any money, and gave it back to him. +I've always been sorry since that I didn't make him take it back--it +never did anything but harm to me. But he had his way. He laid it on +the table and said he wouldn't feel right, and took my hand--and I just +didn't care. + +"Well, what do you think I did after he'd gone? I went and played a +piece on the piano,--and I never can bear to hear that ragtime to this +day. I couldn't seem to feel anything. And after a while I got up and +opened the envelope--it was full of crackly new hundred dollar bills +--thirty of 'em, and as I sat there staring at 'em the pain came on, like a +toothache, in throbs, getting worse all the time until I just couldn't +stand it. I had a notion of sending the money back even then, but I +didn't. I didn't know how to do it,--and as I told you, I wasn't able to +care much. Then I remembered I'd promised to go away, and I had to have +some money for that, and if I didn't leave right off I wouldn't have the +strength to do it. I hadn't even thought where to go: I couldn't think, +so I got dressed and went down to the depot anyway. It was one of those +bright, bitter cold winter days after a thaw when the icicles are hanging +everywhere. I went inside and walked up and down that long platform +under the glass roof. My, it was cold in there! I looked over all the +signs, and made up my mind I'd go to Chicago. + +"I meant to work, I never meant to spend the money, but to send it back. +I'd put it aside--and then I'd go and take a little. Say, it was easy +not to work--and I didn't care what happened to me as long as I wasn't +going to see him again. Well, I'm not trying to smooth it over, +I suppose there was something crooked about me from the start, but I just +went clean to hell with that money, and when I heard he'd gone away, +I came back here." + +"Something crooked!" The words rang in Hodder's ears, in his very soul. +How was he or any man to estimate, to unravel the justice from the +injustice, to pass upon the merit of this woman's punishment? Here +again, in this vitiated life, was only to be seen the remorseless working +of law--cause and effect. Crooked! Had not the tree been crooked from +the beginning--incapable of being straightened? She had herself naively +confessed it. Was not the twist ingrained? And if so, where was the +salvation he had preached? There was good in her still,--but what was +"good"? . . . He took no account of his profound compassion. + +What comfort could he give her, what hope could he hold out that the +twist, now gnarled and knotted, might be removed, that she might gain +peace of soul and body and the "happiness" of which he had talked with +Alison Parr? . . . He raised his eyes, to discover that the woman's +were fixed upon him, questioningly. + +"I suppose I was a fool to tell you," she said, with a shade of her old +bitterness; "it can't do any good." Her next remark was startlingly +astute. "You've found out for yourself, I guess, that all this talk +about heaven and hell and repentance don't amount to anything. Hell +couldn't be any worse than I've been through, no matter how hot it is. +And heaven!" She laughed, burst into tears, and quickly dried them. +"You know the man I've been talking about, that bought me off. I didn't +intend to tell you, but I see you can't help knowing--Eldon Parr. I +don't say he didn't do right from his way of looking at things,--but say, +it wasn't exactly Christian, was it?" + +"No," he said, "it wasn't." He bowed his head, and presently, when he +raised it again, he caught something in her look that puzzled and +disturbed him--an element of adoration. + +"You're white through and through," she said, slowly and distinctly. + +And he knew not how to protest. + +"I'll tell you something," she went on, as one who has made a discovery. +"I liked you the first time you came in here--that night--when you wanted +me to be friends; well, there was something that seemed to make it +impossible then. I felt it, if you didn't." She groped for words. +"I can't explain what it was, but now it's gone. You're different. +I think a lot more of you. Maybe it's because of what you did at +Harrod's, sitting down with me and giving me supper when I was so hungry, +and the champagne. You weren't ashamed of me." + +"Good God, why should I have been!" he exclaimed. + +"You! Why shouldn't you?" she cried fiercely. + +"There's hardly a man in that place that wouldn't have been. They all +know me by sight--and some of 'em better. You didn't see 'em grinning +when I came up to you, but I did. My God--it's awful--it's awful I...." +She burst into violent weeping, long deferred. + +He took her hand in his, and did not speak, waiting for the fit to spend +itself . . . . And after a while the convulsive shudders that shook +her gradually ceased. + +"You must trust me," he said. "The first thing tomorrow I'm going to +make arrangements for you to get out of these rooms. You can't stay here +any longer." + +"That's sure," she answered, trying to smile. "I'm broke. I even owe +the co--the policeman." + +"The policeman!" + +"He has to turn it in to Tom Beatty and the politicians" + +Beatty! Where had he heard the name? Suddenly it came to him that +Beatty was the city boss, who had been eulogized by Mr. Plimpton! + +"I have some good friends who will be glad to help you to get work--and +until you do get work. You will have to fight--but we all have to fight. +Will you try?" + +"Sure, I'll try," she answered, in a low voice. + +Her very tone of submission troubled him. And he had a feeling that, if +he had demanded, she would have acquiesced in anything. + +"We'll talk it over to-morrow," he went on, clinging to his note of +optimism. "We'll find out what you can do easiest, to begin with." + +"I might give music lessons," she suggested. + +The remark increased his uneasiness, for he recognized in it a sure +symptom of disease--a relapse into what might almost have been called +levity, blindness to the supreme tragedy of her life which but a moment +before had shaken and appalled her. He shook his head bravely. + +"I'm afraid that wouldn't do--at first." + +She rose and went into the other room, returning in a few moments with a +work basket, from which she drew a soiled and unfinished piece of +embroidery. + +"There's a bureau cover I started when I was at Pratt's," she said, as +she straightened it over her knees. "It's a copy of an expensive one. +I never had the patience to finish it, but one of the sales-ladies there, +who was an expert, told me it was pretty good: She taught me the stitch, +and I had a notion at that time I might make a little money for dresses +and the theatre. I was always clever with my hands." + +"The very thing!" he said, with hopeful emphasis. "I'm sure I can get +you plenty of it to do. And I'll come back in the morning." + +He gave it back to her, and as she was folding it his glance fell on a +photograph in the basket. + +"I kept it, I don't know why," he heard her say; "I didn't have the heart +to burn it." + +He started recovered himself, and rose. + +"I'll go to see the agent the first thing to-morrow," he said. "And +then--you'll be ready for me? You trust me?" + +"I'd do anything for you," was her tremulous reply. + +Her disquieting, submissive smile haunted him as he roped his way down +the stairs to the street, and then the face in the photograph replaced +it--the laughing eyes, the wilful, pleasure--loving mouth he had seen in +the school and college pictures of Preston Parr. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside of the Cup, Volume 4 +by Winston Churchill + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDE OF THE CUP, VOLUME 4 *** + +***** This file should be named 5359.txt or 5359.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/5/5359/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers***** + + +Title: The Inside of the Cup, Volume 4. + +Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill) + +Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5359] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on June 24, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + + + + + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE OF THE CUP, V4, BY CHURCHILL *** + + + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + +[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the +file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an +entire meal of them. D.W.] + + + + + +THE INSIDE OF THE CUP + +By Winston Churchill + + + +Volume 4. + +XIII. WINTERBOURNE +XIV. A SATURDAY AFTERNOON +XV. THE CRUCIBLE +XVI. AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +WINTERBOURNE + + +I + +Hodder fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, awaking during the night at +occasional intervals to recall chimerical dreams in which the events of +the day before were reflected, but caricatured and distorted. Alison +Parr was talking to the woman in the flat, and both were changed, and yet +he identified both: and on another occasion he saw a familiar figure +surrounded by romping, ragged children--a figure which turned out to be +Eldon Parr's! + +Finally he was aroused by what seemed a summons from the unknown--the +prolonged morning whistle of the shoe factory. For a while he lay as one +benumbed, and the gradual realization that ensued might be likened to the +straining of stiffened wounds. Little by little he reconstructed, until +the process became unbearable, and then rose from his bed with one object +in mind,--to go to Horace Bentley. At first--he seized upon the excuse +that Mr. Bentley would wish to hear the verdict of Dr. Jarvis, but +immediately abandoned it as dishonest, acknowledging the true reason, +that in all the--world the presence of this one man alone might assuage +in some degree the terror in his soul. For the first time in his life, +since childhood, he knew a sense of utter dependence upon another human +being. He felt no shame, would make no explanation for his early visit. + +He turned up Tower, deliberately avoiding Dalton Street in its lower +part, reached Mr. Bentley's door. The wrinkled, hospitable old darky +actually seemed to radiate something of the personality with which he had +so long been associated, and Hodder was conscious of a surge of relief, +a return of confidence at sight of him. Yes, Mr. Bentley was at home, +in the dining room. The rector said he would wait, and not disturb him. + +"He done tole me to bring you out, sah, if you come," said Sam. + +"He expects me?" exclaimed Hodder, with a shock of surprise. + +"That's what he done tole me, sah, to ax you kindly for to step out when +you come." + +The sun was beginning to penetrate into the little back yard, where the +flowers were still glistening with the drops of their morning bath; and +Mr. Bentley sat by the window reading his newspaper, his spectacles on +his nose, and a great grey cat rubbing herself against his legs. He rose +with alacrity. + +"Good morning, sir," he said, and his welcome implied that early morning +visits were the most common and natural of occurrences. "Sam, a plate +for Mr. Hodder. I was just hoping you would come and tell me what Dr. +Jarvis had said about the case." + +But Hodder was not deceived. He believed that Mr. Bentley understood +perfectly why he had come, and the knowledge of the old gentleman's +comprehension curiously added to his sense of refuge. He found himself +seated once more at the mahogany table, permitting Sam to fill his cup +with coffee. + +"Jarvis has given a favourable report, and he is coming this morning +himself, in an automobile, to take the boy out to the hospital." + +"That is like Jarvis," was Mr. Bentley's comment. "We will go there, +together, after breakfast, if convenient for you," he added. + +"I hoped you would," replied the rector. "And I was going to ask +you a favour. I have a check, given me by a young lady to use at my +discretion, and it occurred to me that Garvin might be willing to accept +some proposal from you." He thought of Nan Ferguson, and of the hope he +lead expressed of finding some one in Dalton Street. + +"I have been considering the matter," Mr. Bentley said. "I have a friend +who lives on the trolley line a little beyond the hospital, a widow. It +is like the country there, you know, and I think Mrs. Bledsoe could be +induced to take the Garvins. And then something can be arranged for him. +I will find an opportunity to speak to him this morning." + +Hodder sipped his coffee, and looked out at the morning-glories opening +to the sun. + +"Mrs. Garvin was alone last night. He had gone out shortly after we +left, and had not waited for the doctor. She was greatly worried." + +Hodder found himself discussing these matters on which, an hour before, +he had feared to permit his mind to dwell. And presently, not without +feeling, but in a manner eliminating all account of his personal +emotions, he was relating that climactic episode of the woman at the +piano. The old gentleman listened intently, and in silence. + +"Yes," he said, when the rector had finished, "that is my observation. +Most of them are driven to the life, and held in it, of course, by a +remorseless civilization. Individuals may be culpable, Mr. Hodder--are +culpable. But we cannot put the whole responsibility on individuals." + +"No," Hodder assented, "I can see that now." He paused a moment, and as +his mind dwelt upon the scene and he saw again the woman standing before +him in bravado, the whole terrible meaning of her life and end flashed +through him as one poignant sensation. Her dauntless determination to +accept the consequence of her acts, her willingness to look her future in +the face, cried out to him in challenge. + +"She refused unconditionally," he said. + +Mr. Bentley seemed to read his thought, divine his appeal. + +"We must wait," he answered. + +"Do you think?--" Hodder began, and stopped abruptly. + +"I remember another case, somewhat similar," said Mr. Bentley. "This +woman, too, had the spirit you describe--we could do nothing with her. +We kept an eye on her--or rather Sally Grover did--she deserves credit-- +and finally an occasion presented itself." + +And the woman you speak of was--rehabilitated? "Hodder asked. +He avoided the word "saved." + +"Yes, sir. It was one of the fortunate cases. There are others which +are not so fortunate." + +Hodder nodded. + +"We are beginning to recognize that we are dealing, in, many instances, +with a disease," Mr. Bentley went on. "I am far from saying that it +cannot be cured, but sometimes we are forced to admit that the cure is +not within our power, Mr. Hodder." + +Two thoughts struck the rector simultaneously, the: revelation of what +might be called a modern enlightenment in one of Mr. Bentley's age, an +indication of uninterrupted growth, of the sense of continued youth which +had impressed him from the beginning; and, secondly, an intimation from +the use of the plural pronoun we, of an association of workers (informal, +undoubtedly) behind Mr. Bentley. While he was engaged in these +speculations the door opened. + +"Heah's Miss Sally, Marse Ho'ace," said Sam. + +"Good morning, Sally," said Mr. Bentley, rising from the table with his +customary courtesy, "I'm glad you came in. Let me introduce Mr. Hodder, +of St. John's." + +Miss Grover had capability written all over her. She was a young woman +of thirty, slim to spareness, simply dressed in a shirtwaist and a dark +blue skirt; alert, so distinctly American in type as to give a suggestion +of the Indian. Her quick, deep-set eyes searched Hodder's face as she +jerked his hand; but her greeting was cordial, and, matter-of-fact. She +stimulated curiosity. + +"Well, Sally, what's the news?" Mr. Bentley asked. + +"Gratz, the cabinet-maker, was on the rampage again, Mr. Bentley. His +wife was here yesterday when I got home from work, and I went over with +her. He was in a beastly state, and all the niggers and children in the +neighbourhood, including his own, around the shop. Fusel oil, labelled +whiskey," she explained, succinctly. + +"What did you do?" + +"Took the bottle away from him," said Miss Grower. The simplicity of +this method, Holder thought, was undeniable. "Stayed there until he came +to. Then I reckon I scared him some." + +"How?" Mr. Bentley smiled. + +"I told him he'd have to see you. He'd rather serve three months than do +that--said so. I reckon he would, too," she declared grimly. "He's +better than lie was last year, I think." She thrust her hand in the +pocket of her skirt and produced some bills and silver, which she +counted. "Here's three thirty-five from Sue Brady. I told her she +hadn't any business bothering you, but she swears she'd spend it." + +"That was wrong, Sally." + +Miss Grower tossed her head. + +"Oh, she knew I'd take it, well enough." + +"I imagine she did," Mr. Bentley replied, and his eyes twinkled. He rose +and led the way into the library, where he opened his desk, produced a +ledger, and wrote down the amount in a fine hand. + +"Susan Brady, three dollars and thirty-five cents. I'll put it in the +savings bank to-day. That makes twenty-two dollars and forty cents for +Sue. She's growing rich." + +"Some man'll get it," said Sally. + +Sally," said Mr. Bentley, turning in his chair, "Mr. Holder's been +telling me about a rather unusual woman in that apartment house just +above Fourteenth Street, on the south side of Dalton." + +"I think I know her--by sight," Sally corrected herself. She appealed. +to Holder. "Red hair, and lots of it--I suppose a man would call it +auburn. She must have been something of a beauty, once." + +The rector assented, in some astonishment. + +"Couldn't do anything with her, could you? I reckoned not. I've noticed +her up and down Dalton Street at night." + +Holder was no longer deceived by her matter-of-fact tone. + +"I'll tell you what, Mr. Holder," she went on, energetically, "there's +not a particle of use running after those people, and the sooner you find +it out the less worry and trouble you give yourself." + +"Mr. Holder didn't run after her, Sally," said Mr. Bentley, in gentle +reproof. + +Holder smiled. + +"Well," said Miss Grower, "I've had my eye on her. She has a history-- +most of 'em have. But this one's out of the common. When they're brazen +like that, and have had good looks, you can nearly always tell. You've. +got to wait for something to happen, and trust to luck to be on the spot, +or near it. It's a toss-up, of course. One thing is sure, you can't +make friends with that kind if they get a notion you're up to anything." + +"Sally, you must remember--" Mr. Bentley began. + +Her tone became modified. Mr. Bentley was apparently the only human of +whom she stood in awe. + +"All I meant was," she said, addressing the rector, "that you've got to +run across 'em in some natural way." + +"I understood perfectly, and I agree with you," Holder replied. "I have +come, quite recently, to the same conclusion myself." + +She gave him a penetrating glance, and he had to admit, inwardly, that a +certain satisfaction followed Miss Grower's approval. + +"Mercy, I have to be going," she exclaimed, glancing at the black marble +clock on the mantel. "We've got a lot of invoices to put through to-day. +See you again, Mr. Holder." She jerked his hand once more. "Good +morning, Mr. Bentley." + +"Good morning, Sally." + +Mr. Bentley rose, and took his hat and gold-headed stick from the rack in +the hall. + +"You mustn't mind Sally," he said, when they had reached the sidewalk. +"Sometimes her brusque manner is not understood. But she is a very +extraordinary woman." + +"I can see that," the rector assented quickly, and with a heartiness +that dispelled all doubt of his liking for Miss Grower. Once more many +questions rose to his lips, which he suppressed, since Mr. Bentley +volunteered no information. Hodder became, in fact, so lost in +speculation concerning Mr. Bentley's establishment as to forget the +errand on which--they were bound. And Sally Grower's words, apropos of +the woman in the flat, seemed but an energetic driving home of the severe +lessons of his recent experiences. And how blind he had been, he +reflected, not to have seen the thing for himself! Not to have realized +the essential artificiality of his former method of approach! And then +it struck him that Sally Grower herself must have had a history. + +Mr. Bentley, too, was preoccupied. + +Presently, in the midst of these thoughts, Hodder's eyes were arrested by +a crowd barring the sidewalk on the block ahead; no unusual sight in that +neighbourhood, and yet one which aroused in him sensations of weakness +and nausea. Thus were the hidden vice and suffering of these sinister +places occasionally brought to light, exposed to the curious and morbid +stares of those whose own turn might come on the morrow. It was only by +degrees he comprehended that the people were gathered in front of the +house to which they were bound. An ambulance was seen to drive away: it +turned into the aide street in front of them. + +"A city ambulance!" the rector exclaimed. + +Mr. Bentley did not reply. + +The murmuring group which overflowed the uneven brick pavement to the +asphalt was characteristic: women in calico, drudges, women in wrappers, +with sleepy, awestricken faces; idlers, men and boys who had run out of +the saloons, whose comments were more audible and caustic, and a fringe +of children ceaselessly moving on the outskirts. The crowd parted at +their approach, and they reached the gate, where a burly policeman, his +helmet in his hand, was standing in the morning sunlight mopping his face +with a red handkerchief. He greeted Mr. Bentley respectfully, by name, +and made way for them to pass in. + +"What is the trouble, Ryan?" Mr. Bentley asked. + +"Suicide, sir," the policeman replied. "Jumped off the bridge this +morning. A tug picked him up, but he never came to--the strength wasn't +in him. Sure it's all wore out he was. There was a letter on him, with +the home number, so they knew where to fetch him. It's a sad case, sir, +with the woman in there, and the child gone to the hospital not an hour +ago." + +"You mean Garvin?" Mr. Bentley demanded. + +"It's him I mean, sir." + +"We'd like to go in," said Mr. Bentley. "We came to see them." + +"You're welcome, air, and the minister too. It's only them I'm holdin' +back," and the policeman shook his stick at the people. + +Mr. Bentley walked up the steps, and took off his hat as he went through +the battered doorway. Hodder followed, with a sense of curious faces +staring at them from the thresholds as they passed; they reached the +upper passage, and the room, and paused: the shutters were closed, the +little couch where the child had been was empty. On the bed lay a form- +covered with a sheet, and beside it a woman kneeling, shaken by sobs, +ceaselessly calling a name . . . . + +A stout figure, hitherto unperceived, rose from a corner and came +silently toward them--Mrs. Breitmann. She beckoned to them, and they +followed her into a room on the same floor, where she told them what she +knew, heedless of the tears coursing ceaselessly down her cheeks. + +It seemed that Mrs. Garvin had had a premonition which she had not wholly +confided to the rector. She had believed her husband never would come +back; and early in the morning, in spite of all that Mrs. Breitmann could +do, had insisted at intervals upon running downstairs and scanning the +street. At half past seven Dr. Jarvis had come and himself carried down +the child and put him in the back of his automobile. The doctor had had +a nurse with him, and had begged the mother to accompany them to the +hospital, saying that he would send her back. But she would not be +persuaded to leave the house. The doctor could not wait, and had finally +gone off with little. Dicky, leaving a powder with Mrs. Breitmann for +the mother. Then she had become uncontrollable. + +"Ach, it was terrible!" said the kind woman. "She was crazy, yes--she +was not in her mind. I make a little coffee, but she will not touch it. +All those things about her home she would talk of, and how good he was, +and how she lofed him more again than the child. + +"Und then the wheels in the street, and she makes a cry and runs to see-- +I cannot hold her . . . ." + +"It would be well not to disturb her for a while," said Mr. Bentley, +seating himself on one of the dilapidated chairs which formed apart of +the German woman's meagre furniture. "I will remain here if you, Mr. +Hodder, will make the necessary arrangements for the funeral. Have you +any objections, sir?" + +"Not at all," replied the rector, and left the house, the occupants of +which had already returned to the daily round of their lives: the rattle +of dishes and the noise of voices were heard in the 'ci devant' parlour, +and on the steps he met the little waif with the pitcher of beer; in the +street the boys who had gathered around the ambulance were playing +baseball. Hodder glanced up, involuntarily, at the window of the woman +he had visited the night before, but it was empty. He hurried along the +littered sidewalks to the drug store, where he telephoned an undertaker; +and then, as an afterthought, telephoned the hospital. The boy had +arrived, and was seemingly no worse for the journey. + +All this Hodder performed mechanically. Not until he was returning--not, +indeed, until he entered the house did the whiff of its degrading, heated +odours bring home to him the tragedy which it held, and he grasped the +banister on the stairs. The thought that shook him now was of the +cumulative misery of the city, of the world, of which this history on +which he had stumbled was but one insignificant incident. But he went on +into Mrs. Breitmann's room, and saw Mr. Bentley still seated where he had +left him. The old gentleman looked up at him. + +"Mrs. Breitmann and I are agreed, Mr. Hodder, that Mrs. Garvin ought not +to remain in there. What do you think?" + +"By all means, no," said the rector. + +The German woman burst into a soliloquy of sympathy that became +incoherent. + +"She will not leave him,--nein--she will not come. . . ." + +They went, the three of them, to the doorway of the death chamber and +stood gazing at the huddled figure of the woman by the bedside. She had +ceased to cry out: she was as one grown numb under torture; occasionally +a convulsive shudder shook her. But when Mrs. Breitmann touched her, +spoke to her, her grief awoke again in all its violence, and it was more +by force than persuasion that she was finally removed. Mrs. Breitmann +held one arm, Mr. Bentley another, and between them they fairly carried +her out, for she was frail indeed. + +As for Hodder, something held him back--some dread that he could not at +once define. And while he groped for it, he stood staring at the man on +the bed, for the hand of love had drawn back the sheet from the face. +The battle was over of this poor weakling against the world; the torments +of haunting fear and hate, of drink and despair had triumphed. The sight +of the little group of toys brought up the image of the home in Alder +Street as the wife had pictured it. Was it possible that this man, who +had gone alone to the bridge in the night, had once been happy, content +with life, grateful for it, possessed of a simple trust in his fellow- +men--in Eldon Parr? Once more, unsummoned, came the memory of that +evening of rain and thunder in the boy's room at the top of the great +horse in Park Street. He had pitied Eldon Parr then. Did he now? + +He crossed the room, on tiptoe, as though he feared to wake once more +this poor wretch to his misery and hate, Gently he covered again the face +with the sheet. + +Suddenly he knew the reason of his dread,--he had to face the woman! +He was a minister of Christ, it was his duty to speak to her, as he had +spoken to others in the hour of sorrow and death, of the justice and +goodness of the God to whom she had prayed in the church. What should he +say, now? In an agony of spirit, he sat down on the little couch beside +the window and buried his face in his hands. The sight of poor Garvin's +white and wasted features, the terrible contrast between this miserable +tenement and the palace with its unseen pictures and porcelains and +tapestries, brought home to him with indescribable poignancy his own +predicament. He was going to ask this woman to be comforted by faith and +trust in the God of the man who had driven her husband to death! He +beheld Eldon Parr in his pew complacently worshipping that God, who had +rewarded him with riches and success--beheld himself as another man in +his white surplice acquiescing in that God, preaching vainly . . . . + +At last he got to his feet, went out of the room, reached the doorway of +that other room and looked in. Mr. Bentley sat there; and the woman, +whose tears had ceased to flow, was looking up into his face. + + + +II + +"The office ensuing," says the Book of Common Prayer, meaning the Burial +of the Dead, "is not to be used for any Unbaptized adult, any who die +excommunicate, or who have laid violent hands on themselves." + +Hodder had bought, with a part of Nan Ferguson's money, a tiny plot in a +remote corner of Winterbourne Cemetery. And thither, the next morning, +the body of Richard Garvin was taken. + +A few mourners had stolen into the house and up the threadbare stairs +into the miserable little back room, somehow dignified as it had never +been before, and laid their gifts upon the coffin. An odd and pitiful +assortment they were--mourners and gifts: men and women whose only bond +with the man in life had been the bond of misery; who had seen him as he +had fared forth morning after morning in the hopeless search for work, +and slunk home night after night bitter and dejected; many of whom had +listened, jeeringly perhaps, to his grievance against the world, though +it were in some sort their own. Death, for them, had ennobled him. The +little girl whom Hodder had met with the pitcher of beer came tiptoeing +with a wilted bunch of pansies, picked heaven knows where; stolen, maybe, +from one of the gardens of the West End. Carnations, lilies of the +valley, geraniums even--such were the offerings scattered loosely on the +lid until a woman came with a mass of white roses that filled the room +with their fragrance,--a woman with burnished red hair. Hodder started +as he recognized her; her gaze was a strange mixture of effrontery and-- +something else; sorrow did not quite express it. The very lavishness of +her gift brought to him irresistibly the reminder of another offering. +. . . . She was speaking. + +"I don't blame him for what he done--I'd have done it, too, if I'd been +him. But say, I felt kind of bad when I heard it, knowing about the kid, +and all. I had to bring something--" + +Instinctively Hodder surmised that she was in doubt as to the acceptance +of her flowers. He took them from her hand, and laid them at the foot of +the coffin. + +"Thank you," he said, simply. + +She stared at him a moment with the perplexity she had shown at times on +the night he visited her, and went out. . . + +Funerals, if they might be dignified by this name, were not infrequent +occurrences in Dalton Street, and why this one should have been looked +upon as of sufficient importance to collect a group of onlookers at the +gate it is difficult to say. Perhaps it was because of the seeming +interest in it of the higher powers--for suicide and consequent widows +and orphans were not unknown there. This widow and this orphan were to +be miraculously rescued, were to know Dalton Street no more. The rector +of a fashionable church, of all beings, was the agent in the miracle. +Thus the occasion was tinged with awe. As for Mr. Bentley, his was a +familiar figure, and had been remarked in Dalton Street funerals before. + +They started, the three mourners, on the long drive to the cemetery, +through unfrequented streets lined with mediocre dwellings, interspersed +with groceries and saloons--short cuts known only to hearse drivers: they +traversed, for some distance, that very Wilderness road where Mr. +Bentley's old-fashioned mansion once had stood on its long green slope, +framed by ancient trees; the Wilderness road, now paved with hot blocks +of granite over which the carriage rattled; spread with car tracks, +bordered by heterogeneous buildings of all characters and descriptions, +bakeries and breweries, slaughter houses and markets, tumble-down +shanties, weedy corner lots and "refreshment-houses" that announced +"Lager Beer, Wines and Liquors." At last they came to a region which was +neither country nor city, where the road-houses were still in evidence, +where the glass roofs of greenhouses caught the burning rays of the sun, +where yards filled with marble blocks and half-finished tombstones +appeared, and then they turned into the gates of Winterbourne. + +Like the city itself, there was a fashionable district in Winterbourne: +unlike the city, this district remained stationary. There was no soot +here, and if there had been, the dead would not have minded it. They +passed the Prestons and the Parrs; the lots grew smaller, the tombstones +less pretentious; and finally they came to an open grave on a slope where +the trees were still young, and where three men of the cemetery force +lifted the coffin from the hearse--Richard Garvin's pallbearers. + +John Hodder might not read the service, but there was none to tell him +that the Gospel of John was not written for this man. He stood an the +grass beside the grave, and a breeze from across the great river near by +stirred the maple leaves above his head. "I am the resurrection and the +life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet +shall he live." Nor was there any canon to forbid the words of Paul: +"It is sown in corruption; it is raised in in corruption; it is sown in +dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in +power; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." + +They laid the flowers on the fresh earth, even the white roses, and then +they drove back to the city. + + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +A SATURDAY AFTERNOON + + +I + +The sight of a certain old gentleman as he walked along the shady side of +Twenty-second Street about two o'clock on a broiling Saturday afternoon +in midsummer was one not easily to be forgotten. A younger man, tall and +vigorous, clad in a thin suit of blue serge, walked by his side. They +were followed by a shouting troop of small boys who overran the +pavements, and some of whom were armed with baseball bats. The big +trolley car was hailed by a dozen dirty little hands. + +Even the grumpy passengers were disarmed. The conductor took Mr. +Bentley's bill deprecatingly, as much as to say that the newly organized +Traction Company--just out of the receivers' hands--were the Moloch, not +he, and rang off the fares under protest. And Mr. Bentley, as had been +his custom for years, sat down and took off his hat, and smiled so +benignly at those around him that they immediately began to talk, to him. +It was always irresistible, this desire to talk to Mr. Bentley. If you +had left your office irritated and out of sorts, your nerves worn to an +edge by the uninterrupted heat, you invariably got off at your corner +feeling better. It was Phil Goodrich who had said that Horace Bentley +had only to get on a Tower Street car to turn it into a church. And if +he had chosen to establish that 'dernier cri' of modern civilization +where ladies go who have 'welt-schmerz' without knowing why,-- +a sanitarium, he might have gained back again all the money he had lost +in giving his Grantham stock to Eldon Parr. + +Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he could have emptied Dalton Street of +its children. In the first place, there was the irresistible inducement +to any boy to ride several miles on a trolley without having this right +challenged by the irate guardian of the vehicle, without being summarily +requested to alight at twenty-five miles an hour: in the second place, +there was the soda water and sweet biscuit partaken of after the baseball +game in that pavilion, more imposing in one's eyes than the Taj Mahal. +Mr. Bentley would willingly have taken all Dalton Street. He had his own +'welt-schmerz', though he did not go to a sanitarium to cure it; he was +forced to set an age limit of ten, and then establish a high court of +appeal; for there were boys whose biographies, if they are ever written, +will be as hazy as those of certain world-wide celebrities who might be +mentioned concerning the date and exact spot of the entrance of their +heroes into the light. The solemn protestations, the tears, +the recrimination even, brought pangs to the old gentleman's heart, +for with all the will in the world he had been forced in the nature +of things, to set a limit. + +This limit had recently been increased by the unlooked-for appearance on +these excursions of the tall man in the blue serge suit, whose knowledge +of the national game and of other matters of vital import to youth was +gratifying if sometimes disconcerting; who towered, an unruffled +Gulliver, over their Lilliputian controversies, in which bats were waved +and fists brought into play and language used on the meaning of which +the Century dictionary is silent. On one former occasion, indeed, +Mr. Bentley had found moral suasion, affection, and veneration of no +avail, and had had to invoke the friendly aid of a park policeman to +quell one of these incipient riots. To Mr. Bentley baseball was as a +sealed book. The tall man's justice, not always worthy of the traditions +of Solomon, had in it an element of force. To be lifted off the ground +by strong arms at the moment you are about to dust the home plate with +your adversary is humiliating, but effective. It gradually became +apparent that a decision was a decision. And one Saturday this +inexplicable person carried in his hand a mysterious package which, when +opened, revealed two pairs of diminutive boxing gloves. They instantly +became popular. + +By the time they had made the accidental and somewhat astounding +discovery that he was a parson, they were willing to overlook it; in +view, perhaps, of his compensating accomplishments. Instead of advising +them to turn the other cheek, he taught them uppercuts, feints, and jabs, +and on the proof of this unexpected acquaintance with a profession all of +them openly admired, the last vestige of reserve disappeared. He was +accepted without qualifications. + + + +II + +Although the field to which they resorted was not in the most frequented +section of the park, pedestrians often passed that way, and sometimes +lingered. Thus, towards the close of a certain Saturday in July, a young +woman walked out of the wood path and stood awhile gazing intently at the +active figure striding among the diminutive, darting forms. Presently, +with an amused expression, she turned her head to discover Mr. Bentley, +who sat on a green bench under a tree, his hat and stick on the grass +beside him. She was unaware that he had been looking at her. + +"Aren't they having a good time!" she said, and the genuine thrill in her +voice betrayed a rare and unmistakable pleasure. + +"Ah," replied Mr. Bentley, smiling back at her, "you like to see them, +too. Most persons do. Children are not meant for the city, my dear +young lady, their natural home is in the woods and fields, and these +little fellows are a proof of it. When they come out here, they run +wild. You perceive," he added with a twinkle, as an expletive of +unquestionable vigour was hurled across the diamond, "they are not +always so polite as they might be." + +The young woman smiled again, but the look she gave him was a puzzled +one. And then, quite naturally, she sank, down on the grass, on the +other side of Mr. Bentley's hat, watching the game for a while in +silence. + +"What a tyrant!" she exclaimed. Another uproar had been quelled, +and two vigorously protesting runners sent back to their former bases. + +"Oh, a benevolent tyrant," Mr. Bentley corrected her. "Mr. Hodder has +the gift of managing boys,--he understands them. And they require a +strong hand. His generation has had the training which mine lacked. In +my day, at college, we worked off our surplus energy on the unfortunate +professors, and we carried away chapel bells and fought with the +townspeople." + +It required some effort, she found, to imagine this benevolent looking +old gentleman assaulting professors. + +"Nowadays they play baseball and football, and box!" He pointed to the +boxing gloves on the grass. "Mr. Hodder has taught them to settle their +differences in that way; it is much more sensible." + +She picked off the white clover-tops. + +"So that is Mr. Hodder, of St. John's," she said. + +"Ah, you know him, then?" + +I've met him," she answered quietly. "Are these children connected with +his church?" + +"They are little waifs from Dalton Street and that vicinity," said Mr. +Bentley. "Very few of them, I should imagine, have ever been inside of a +church." + +She seemed surprised. + +"But--is it his habit to bring them out here?" The old gentleman beamed +on her, perhaps with the hint of a smile at her curiosity. + +"He has found time for it, this summer. It is very good of him." + +She refrained from comment on this remark, falling into reflection, +leaning back, with one hand outstretched, on the grass. The game went on +vociferously, the shrill lithe voices piercing the silence of the summer +afternoon. Mr. Bentley's eyes continued to rest on her. + +"Tell me," he inquired, after a while, "are you not Alison Parr?" + +She glanced up at him, startled. "Yes." + +"I thought so, although I have not seen you since you were a little girl. +I knew your mother very well indeed, but it is too much to expect you to +remember me, after all this time. No doubt you have forgotten my name. +I am Mr. Bentley." + +"Mr. Bentley!" she cried, sitting upright and gazing at him. "How stupid +of me not to have known you! You couldn't have been any one else." + +It was the old gentleman's turn to start. She rose impulsively and sat +down on the bench beside him, and his hand trembled as he laid it in +hers. + +"Yes, my dear, I am still alive. But surely you cannot remember me, +Alison?" + +The old look of almost stubborn honesty he recalled in the child came +into her eyes. + +"I do--and I don't," she said, perplexed. "It seemed to me as if I ought +to have recognized you when I came up, and yet I hadn't the slightest +notion who you were. I knew you were somebody." + +He shook his head, but did not speak. + +"But you have always been a fact in my existence--that is what I want to +say," she went on. "It must be possible to remember a person and not +recognize him, that is what I feel. I can remember you coming to our +house in Ransome Street, and how I looked forward to your visits. And +you used to have little candy beans in your pockets," she cried. "Have +you now?" + +His eyes were a little dimmed as he reached, smilingly, into the skirts +of a somewhat shiny but scrupulously brushed coat and produced a brightly +colored handful. She took one, and put it in her mouth: + +"Oh," she said, "how good they were--Isn't it strange how a taste brings +back events? I can remember it all as if it were yesterday, and how I +used to sit on your knee, and mother would tell me not to bother you." + +"And now--you are grown," he said. + +"Something more than grown," she smiled. "I was thirty-one in May. +Tell me," she asked, choosing another of the beans which he still +absently held, "do you get them for these?" And she nodded toward the +Dalton Street waifs. + +"Yes," he said, "they are children, too." + +"I can remember," she said, after a pause, "I can remember my mother +speaking of you to me the year she died. I was almost grown, then. It +was after we had moved up to Park Street, and her health had already +begun to fail. That made an impression on me, but I have forgotten what +she said--it was apropos of some recollection. No--it was a photograph-- +she was going over some old things." Alison ceased speaking abruptly, +for the pain in Mr. Bentley's remarkable grey eyes had not escaped her. +What was it about him? Why could she not recall? Long-forgotten, +shadowy episodes of the past tormented her, flitted provokingly through +her mind--ungrasped: words dropped in her presence which had made their +impression, but the gist of which was gone. Why had Mr. Bentley ceased +coming to the house? So strongly did she feel his presence now that the +thought occurred to her,--perhaps her mother had not wished her to forget +him! + +"I did not suspect," she heard him saying, "that you would go out into +the world and create the beautiful gardens of which I have heard. But +you had no lack of spirit in those days, too." + +"I was a most disagreeable child, perverse,--cantankerous--I can hear my +mother saying it! As for the gardens--they have given me something to +do, they have kept me out of mischief. I suppose I ought to be thankful, +but I still have the rebellious streak when I see what others have done, +what others are doing, and I sometimes wonder what right I ever had to +think that I might create something worth while." + +He glanced at her quickly as she sat with bent head. + +"Others put a higher value on what you have done." + +"Oh, they don't know--" she exclaimed. + +If something were revealed to him by her tone, he did not betray it, but +went on cheerfully. + +"You have been away a long time, Alison. It must interest you to come +back, and see the changes in our Western civilization. We are moving +very rapidly--in certain directions," he corrected himself. + +She appraised his qualification. + +"In certain directions,--yes. But they are little better in the East. +I have scarcely been back," she added, "since I went to Paris to study. +I have often thought I should like to return and stay awhile, only-- +I never seemed to get time. Now I am going over a garden for my father +which was one of my first efforts, and which has always reproached me." + +"And you do not mind the heat?" he asked. "Those who go East to live +return to find our summers oppressive." + +"Oh, I'm a salamander, I think," Alison laughed. + +Thus they sat chatting, interrupted once or twice by urchins too small +to join in the game, who came running to Mr. Bentley and stood staring +at Alison as at a being beyond the borders of experience: and she would +smile at them quite as shyly,--children being beyond her own. Her +imagination was as keen, as unspoiled as a child's, and was stimulated by +a sense of adventure, of the mystery which hung about this fine old +gentleman who betrayed such sentiment for a mother whom she had loved and +admired and still secretly mourned. Here, if there had been no other, +was a compelling bond of sympathy . . . . + +The shadows grew longer, the game broke up. And Hodder, surrounded by +an argumentative group keeping pace with him, came toward them from the +field; Alison watched him curiously as he turned this way and that to +answer the insistent questions with which he was pelted, and once she saw +him stride rapidly after a dodging delinquent and seize him by the collar +amidst piercing yells of approval, and derision for the rebel. + +"It's remarkable how he gets along with them," said Mr. Bentley, smiling +at the scene. "Most of them have never known what discipline is." + +The chorus approached. And Hodder, recognizing her, dropped the collar +he held: A young woman conversing with Mr. Bentley--was no unusual sight, +--he had made no speculations as to this one's identity. He left the +boys, and drew near. + +"You know Miss Parr, I believe," the old gentleman said. + +Hodder took her hand. He had often tried to imagine his feelings if he +should meet her again: what he should do and say,--what would be their +footing. And now he had no time to prepare . . . . + +"It is so strange, she said, with that note of wonder at life in her +voice which he recalled so well, "that I should have come across Mr. +Bentley here after so many years. How many years, Mr. Bentley?" + +"Ah, my dear," he protested, "my measurements would not be yours." + +"It is better for both of us not to say, Alison declared, laughingly. + +"You knew Mr. Bentley?" asked Hodder, astonished. + +"He was a very dear friend of my mother's, although I used to appropriate +him when he came to our house. It was when we lived in Ransome Street, +ages ago. But I don't think Mr. Bentley has grown a bit older." + +"He is one of the few who have found the secret of youth," said the +rector. + +But the old gentleman had moved off into the path, or perhaps it would be +more accurate to say that he was carried off by the swarm which clustered +around him, two smaller ones tugging at his hand, and all intent upon +arriving at the soda-water pavilion near the entrance. They had followed +him with their eyes, and they saw him turn around and smile at them, +helplessly. Alison presented a perplexed face to Hodder. + +"Does he bring them here,--or you?" she asked. + +"I--" he hesitated. "Mr. Bentley has done this every Saturday afternoon +for years," he said, "I am merely one of them." + +She looked at him quickly. They had started to follow, in the cool path +beneath the forest trees. Restraint fell upon them, brought about by the +memory of the intimacy of their former meeting, further complicated on +Hodder's part by his new attitude toward her father, and his finding her +in the company, of all persons, of Mr. Bentley. Unuttered queries +pressed on the minds of both. + +"Tell me about Mr. Bentley," she said. + +Hodder hesitated. + +"I scarcely know where to begin," he replied, yet smiling at the +characteristic abruptness of her question. The modulations of her voice +revealed again the searching, inquisitive spirit within her, and his +responded to the intensity of the interest in Mr. Bentley. + +"Begin anywhere." + +"Anywhere?" he repeated, seeking to gain time. Yes--anywhere," she said +impatiently. + +"Well, he lives in Dalton Street, if you recall what kind of a place that +is" (she nodded), "and he is known from one end of it to the other." + +"I see what he is--he is the most extraordinary person I have ever known. +Just to talk to him gives one such a queer feeling of--of dissatisfaction +with one's self, and seeing him once more seems to have half revived in +me a whole series of dead memories. And I have been trying to think, but +it is all so tantalizing. There is some mystery about him," she +insisted. "He disappeared suddenly, and my mother never mentioned him +but once afterward, but other persons have spoken of him since--I forget +who. He was so well known, and he used to go to St. John's." + +"Yes, he used to go to St. John's." + +"What happened to him--do you know? The reason he stopped coming to our +house was some misunderstanding with my father, of course. I am positive +my mother never changed her feelings toward him." + +"I can only tell you what he has told me, which is all I know-- +authoritatively," Hodder replied. How could he say to her that her +father had ruined Mr. Bentley? Indeed, with a woman of her fearlessness +and honesty--and above all, her intuition,--he felt the cruelty of his +position keenly. Hodder did not relish half truths; and he felt +that, however scant his intercourse in the future might be with Alison +Parr, he would have liked to have kept it on that basis of frankness in +which it had begun. But the exact stage of disillusionment she had +reached in regard to Eldon Parr was unknown to him, and he feared that +a further revelation might possibly sever the already precarious tie +between father and daughter. + +He recounted, therefore, that Mr. Bentley had failed; and how he had +before that given much of his estate away in charity, how he had been +unable to keep his pew in St. John's, and had retired to the house in +Dalton Street. + +For some moments after he had finished Alison did not reply. + +"What is his number in Dalton Street?" she asked. + +Hodder informed her. + +He could not read in her face whether she suspected that he could have +told her more. And in spite of an inordinate, human joy in being again +in her presence, his desire to hide from her that which had taken place +within him, and the inability he felt to read his future, were +instinctive: the more so because of the very spontaneity they had +achieved at their first meeting. As a man, he shrank from confessing +to her, however indirectly, the fact that she herself was so vital an +element in his disillusionment. For the conversation in the garden had +been the immediate cause of the inner ferment ending in his resolution to +go away, and had directed him, by logical steps, to the encounter in the +church with Mrs. Garvin. + +"You have not yet finished the garden?" he asked. "I imagined you back +in the East by this time." + +"Oh, I am procrastinating," she replied. "It is a fit of sheer laziness. +I ought to be elsewhere, but I was born without a conscience. If I had +one I should try to quiet it by reminding it that I am fulfilling a long- +delayed promise--I am making a garden for Mrs. Larrabbee. You know her, +of course, since she is a member of your congregation." + +"Yes, I know her," he assented. And his mind was suddenly filled with +vivid colour,--cobalt seas, and arsenic-green spruces with purple cones, +cardinal-striped awnings that rattled in the salt breeze, and he saw once +more the panorama of the life which had passed from him and the woman in +the midst of it. And his overwhelming thought was of relief that he had +somehow escaped. In spite of his unhappiness now, he would not have gone +back. He realized for the first time that he had been nearer +annihilation then than to-day. + +"Grace isn't here to bother me with the ideas she has picked up in Europe +and catalogued," Alison continued. + +"Catalogued!" Hodder exclaimed, struck by the pertinency of the word. + +"Yes. Did you ever know anybody who had succeeded half so well in +piecing together and absorbing into a harmonized whole all the divergent, +artificial elements that enter into the conventional world to-day? Her +character might be called a triumph of synthesis. For she has actually +achieved an individuality--that is what always surprises me when I think +of her. She has put the puzzle picture together, she has become a +person." + +He remembered, with a start, that this was the exact word Mrs. Larrabbee +had used about Alison Parr. If he had searched the world, he could not +have found a greater contrast than that between these two women. And +when she spoke again, he was to be further struck by her power of logical +insight. + +"Grace wants me because she thinks I have become the fashion--for the +same reason that Charlotte Plimpton wants me. Only there is this +difference--Grace will know the exact value of what I shall have done. +Not that she thinks me a Le Notre"--Alison laughed--"What I mean is, she +sees behind, she sees why it is fashionable to have a garden, since she +has worked out the values of that existence. But there!" Alison added, +with a provocative touch that did not escape him, "I am picking your +parishioners to pieces again." + +"You have more right than I," he replied, "they have been your friends +since childhood." + +"I thought you had gone away," she said. + +"Why?" he demanded. Had she been to church again? + +"My father told me before he left that you were to take a cruise with him +on the yacht he has chartered." + +"He wrote me from New York--I was unable to go," Hodder said slowly. + +He felt her gaze upon him, but resolutely refused to meet it. . . . +They walked on in silence until they came to the more open spaces near +the edge of the Park, thronged that Saturday evening by crowds which had +sought the, city's breathing space. Perfect trees cast long, fantastic +shadows across the lawns, fountains flung up rainbows from the midst of +lakes; children of the tenements darted hither and thither, rolled and +romped on the grass; family parties picnicked everywhere, and a very +babel of tongues greeted the ear--the languages of Europe from Sweden to +Italy. + +Suddenly an exclamation from her aroused and thrilled him. + +"Isn't it wonderful how happy they are, and with what simple pleasures +they are satisfied! I often come over here on Saturdays and Sundays, +just to talk to them." + +"Talk to them!" he echoed stupidly. "In their own languages?" + +"Oh, I know a little German and Italian, though I can't lay claim to +Czech," she answered gayly. "Why are you so surprised that I should +possess such modest accomplishments?" + +"It's not the accomplishments." He hesitated. + +"No. You are surprised that I should be interested in humanity." She +stood facing him. "Well, I am," she said, half humorously, half +defiantly. "I believe I am more interested in human beings than in +anything else in the world--when they are natural, as these people are +and when they will tell one their joys and their troubles and their +opinions." + +"Enthusiasm, self-assertion, had as usual, transformed her, and he saw +the colour glowing under her olive skin. Was she accusing him of a lack +of frankness? + +"And why," he asked, collecting himself, "did you think--" he got no +further. + +"It's because you have an idea that I'm a selfish Epicurean, if that +isn't tautology--because I'm interested in a form of art, the rest of the +world can go hang. You have a prejudice against artists. I wish I +really were one, but I'm not." + +This speech contained so many surprises for him that he scarcely knew how +to answer it. + +"Give me a little time," he begged, "and perhaps I'll get over my +prejudices. The worst of them, at any rate. You are helping me to do +so." He tried to speak lightly, but his tone was more serious in the +next sentence. "It seems to me personally that you have proved your +concern for your fellow-creatures." + +Her colour grew deeper, her manner changed. + +"That gives me the opportunity to say something I have hoped to say, ever +since I saw you. I hoped I should see you again." + +"You are not going away soon?" he exclaimed. + +The words were spoken before he grasped their significance. + +"Not at once. I don't know how long I shall stay," she answered +hurriedly, intent upon what was in her mind. "I have thought a great +deal about what I said to you that afternoon, and I find it more than +ever difficult to excuse myself. I shan't attempt to. I merely mean to +ask you to forgive me." + +"There is nothing to forgive," he assured her, under the influence of the +feeling she had aroused. + +"It's nice of you to say so, and to take it as you did--nicer than I can +express. I am afraid I shall never learn to appreciate that there may be +other points of view toward life than my own. And I should have realized +and sympathized with the difficulties of your position, and that you were +doing the best under the circumstances." + +"No," he exclaimed, "don't say that! Your other instinct was the truer +one, if indeed you have really changed it--I don't believe yon have." He +smiled at her again. "You didn't hurt my feelings, you did me a service. +I told you so at the time, and I meant it. And, more than that, I +understood." + +"You understood--?" + +"You were not criticizing me, you were--what shall I say?--merely trying +to iron out some of tie inconsistencies of life. Well, you helped me to +iron out some of the inconsistencies of my own. I am profoundly +grateful." + +She gazed at him, puzzled. But he did not, he could not enlighten her. +Some day she would discover what he meant. + +"If so, I am glad," she said, in a low voice. + +They were standing in the midst of the crowd that thronged around the +pavilion. An urchin caught hold of the rector's coat. + +"Here he is! Say, Mr. Hodder, ain't you going to have any sody?" + +"Certainly we are," he replied, returning Alison's faint smile . . . . +In the confusion that followed he caught a glimpse of her talking to Mr. +Bentley; and later, after he had taken her hand, his eyes followed her +figure wending its way in the evening light through the groups toward +Park Street, and he saw above the tree-tops the red tiled roof of the +great house in which she was living, alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE CRUCIBLE + + +I + +For better or worse John Hodder had flung his treasured beliefs into the +crucible, and one by one he watched them crumble and consume away. None +but his own soul knew what it cost him to make the test; and some times, +in the early stages of it, he would cast down his book under the lamp and +walk for hours in the night. Curiosity, and the despair of one who is +lost impelled him to persist. + +It had been said of him that he had a talent for the law, and he now +discovered that his mind, once freed, weighed the evidence with a +pitiless logic, paid its own tribute--despite the anguish of the heart +--to the pioneers of truth whose trail it followed into the Unknown, who +had held no Mystery more sacred than Truth itself, who had dared to +venture into the nothingness between the whirling worlds. + +He considered them, those whirling worlds, at night. Once they had been +the candles of Jehovah, to light the path of his chosen nation, to herald +the birth of his Son. And now? How many billions of blind, struggling +creatures clung to them? Where now was this pin-point of humanity, in +the midst of an appalling spectacle of a grinding, remorseless nature? + +And that obscure Event on which he had staked his hopes? Was He, as John +had written, the First Born of the Universe, the Word Incarnate of a +system that defied time and space, the Logos of an outworn philosophy? +Was that Universe conscious, as Berkeley had declared, or the blind +monster of substance alone, or energy, as some modern scientists brutally +and triumphantly maintained? Where was the Spirit that breathed in it of +hope? + +Such were some of the questions that thronged for solution. What was +mind, what spirit? an attenuated vapour of the all-pervading substance? + +He could not permit himself to dwell on these thoughts--madness lay that +way. Madness, and a watching demon that whispered of substance, and +sought to guide his wanderings in the night. Hodder clung to the shell +of reality, to the tiny panorama of the visible and the finite, to the +infinitesimal gropings that lay recorded before him on the printed page. +Let him examine these first, let him discover--despite the price--what +warrant the mind of man (the only light now vouchsafed to him in his +darkness) gave him to speculate and to hope concerning the existence +of a higher, truer Reality than that which now tossed and wounded him. +It were better to know. + +Scarcely had the body been lifted from the tree than the disputes +commenced, the adulterations crept in. The spontaneity, the fire and +zeal of the self-sacrificing itinerant preachers gave place to the +paralyzing logic then pervading the Roman Empire, and which had sent its +curse down the ages to the modern sermon; the geometrical rules of Euclid +were made to solve the secrets of the universe. The simple faith of the +cross which had inspired the martyr along the bloody way from Ephesus to +the Circus at Rome was formalized by degrees into philosophy: the faith +of future ages was settled by compromises, by manipulation, by bribery in +Councils of the Church which resembled modern political conventions, and +in which pagan Emperors did not hesitate to exert their influence over +the metaphysical bishops of the factions. Recriminations, executions, +murders--so the chronicles ran. + +The prophet, the idealist disappeared, the priest with his rites and +ceremonies and sacrifices, his power to save and damn, was once more in +possession of the world. + +The Son of Man was degraded into an infant in his mother's arms. An +unhealthy, degenerating asceticism, drawn from pagan sources, began with +the monks and anchorites of Egypt and culminated in the spectacle of +Simeon's pillar. The mysteries of Eleusis, of Attis, Mithras, Magna +Mater and Isis developed into Christian sacraments--the symbol became +the thing itself. Baptism the confession of the new life, following +the customs of these cults, became initiation; and from the same +superstitious origins, the repellent materialistic belief that to eat +of the flesh and drink of the blood of a god was to gain immortality: +immortality of the body, of course. + + +Ah, when the superstitions of remote peoples, the fables and myths, were +taken away; when the manufactured history and determinism of the +Israelites from the fall of man to the coming of that Messiah, whom the +Jews crucified because he failed to bring them their material Kingdom, +were discredited; when the polemic and literal interpretations of +evangelists had been rejected, and the pious frauds of tampering monks; +when the ascetic Buddhism was removed; the cults and mysteries, the +dogmas of an ancient naive philosophy discarded; the crude science of a +Ptolemy who conceived the earth as a flat terrestrial expanse and hell +as a smoking pit beneath proved false; the revelation of a Holy City of +jasper and gold and crystal, the hierarchy with its divine franchise to +save and rule and conquer,--when all these and more were eliminated from +Christianity, what was left? + +Hodder surveyed the ruins. And his mind recalled, that Sunday of rain in +New York which had been the turning-point in his life, when he had +listened to the preacher, when he had walked the streets unmindful of the +wet, led on by visions, racked by fears. And the same terror returned to +him now after all the years of respite, tenfold increased, of falling in +the sight of man from the topmost tower. + +What was to become of him, now that the very driving power of life was +gone? Where would he go? to what might he turn his hand, since all were +vanity and illusion? Careers meant nothing, had any indeed been possible +to a man forty, left staring at stark reality after the rainbow had +vanished. Nineveh had mocked and conquered him who had thought himself +a conqueror. Self flew back and swung on its central pivot and took +command. His future, his fate, what was to become of him. Who else now +was to be considered? And what was to restrain him from reaching out his +hand to pluck the fruit which he desired? . . . + + + +II + +What control from the Unknown is this which now depresses and now +releases the sensitive thing called the soul of man, and sends it upward +again until the green light of hope shines through the surface water? +He might have grown accustomed, Holder thought, to the obscurity of the +deeps; in which, after a while, the sharp agony of existence became +dulled, the pressure benumbing. He was conscious himself, at such times, +of no inner recuperation. Something drew him up, and he would find +himself living again, at length to recognize the hand if not to +comprehend the power. + +The hand was Horace Bentley's. + +What was the source of that serenity which shone on the face of his +friend? Was it the light of faith? Faith in--what? Humanity, Mr. +Bentley had told him on that first evening when they had met: faith in a +world filled with cruelties, disillusionments, lies, and cheats! On what +Authority was it based? Holder never asked, and no word of theology ever +crossed Mr. Bentley's lips; not by so much as a sign did he betray any +knowledge he may have had of the drama taking place in Holder's soul; no +comment escaped him on the amazing anomalies of the life the rector was +leading, in the Church but not of it. + +It was only by degrees Holder came to understand that no question would +be asked, and the frequency of his visits to Dalton Street increased. +He directed his steps thither sometimes hurriedly, as though pursued, as +to a haven from a storm. And a haven it was indeed! At all hours of the +day he came, and oftener in the night, in those first weeks, and if Mr. +Bentley were not at home the very sight of the hospitable old darky +brought surging up within him a sense of security, of, relief; the +library itself was filled with the peace of its owner. How many others +had brought their troubles here, had been lightened on the very threshold +of this sanctuary! + +Gradually Hodder began to realize something of their numbers. Gradually, +as he was drawn more and more into the network of the relationships of +this extraordinary man,--nay, as he inevitably became a part of that +network,--a period of bewilderment ensued. He found himself involved, +and quite naturally, in unpremeditated activities, running errands, +forming human ties on a human basis. No question was asked, no +credentials demanded or rejected. Who he was made no difference-- +he was a friend of Horace Bentley's. He had less time to read, less +time to think, to scan the veil of his future. + +He had run through a score of volumes, critical, philosophical, +scientific, absorbing their contents, eagerly anticipating their +conclusions; filled, once he had begun, with a mania to destroy, +a savage determination to leave nothing,--to level all . . . . + +And now, save for the less frequent relapsing moods, he had grown +strangely unconcerned about his future, content to live in the presence +of this man; to ignore completely the aspects of a life incomprehensible +to the few, besides Mr. Bentley, who observed it. + +What he now mostly felt was relief, if not a faint self-congratulation +that he had had the courage to go through with it, to know the worst. +And he was conscious even, at times, of a faint reviving sense of freedom +he had not known since the days at Bremerton. If the old dogmas were +false, why should he regret them? He began to see that, once he had +suspected their falsity, not to have investigated were to invite decay; +and he pictured himself growing more unctuous, apologetic, plausible. +He had, at any rate, escaped the more despicable fate, and if he went to +pieces now it would be as a man, looking the facts in the face,--not as +a coward and a hypocrite. + +Late one afternoon, when he dropped in at Mr. Bentley's house, he was +informed by Sam that a lady was awaiting Mr. Bentley in the library. +As Hodder opened the door he saw a tall, slim figure of a woman with her +back toward him. She was looking at the photographs on the mantel. + +It was Alison Parr! + +He remembered now that she had asked for Mr. Bentley's number, but it had +never occurred to him that he might one day find her here. And as she +turned he surprised in her eyes a shyness he had never seen in them +before. Thus they stood gazing at each other a moment before either +spoke. + +"Oh, I thought you were Mr. Bentley," she said. + +"Have you been waiting long?" he asked. + +"Three quarters of an hour, but I haven't minded it. This is such an +interesting room, with its pictures and relics and books. It has a +soothing effect, hasn't it? To come here is like stepping out of the +turmoil of the modern world into a peaceful past." + +He was struck by the felicity of her description. + +"You have been here before?" he asked. + +"Yes." She settled herself in the armchair; and Hodder, accepting the +situation, took the seat beside her. "Of course I came, after I had found +out who Mr. Bentley was. The opportunity to know him again--was not to +be missed." + +"I can understand that," he assented. + +"That is, if a child can even be said to know such a person as Mr. +Bentley. Naturally, I didn't appreciate him in those days--children +merely accept, without analyzing. And I have not yet been able to +analyze,--I can only speculate and consider." + +Her enthusiasm never failed to stir and excite Hodder. Nor would he have +thought it possible that a new value could be added to Mr. Bentley in his +eyes. Yet so it was. + +He felt within him, as she spoke, the quickening of a stimulus. + +"When I came in a little while ago," Alison continued, "I found a woman +in black, with such a sweet, sad face. We began a conversation. She had +been through a frightful experience. Her husband had committed suicide, +her child had been on the point of death, and she says that she lies +awake nights now thinking in terror of what might have happened to her +if you and Mr. Bentley hadn't helped her. She's learning to be a +stenographer. Do you remember her?--her name is Garvin." + +"Did she say--anything more?" Hodder anxiously demanded. + +"No," said Alison, surprised by his manner, "except that Mr. Bentley had +found her a place to live, near the hospital, with a widow who was a +friend of his. And that the child was well, and she could look life in +the face again. Oh, it is terrible to think that people all around us +are getting into such straits, and that we are so indifferent to it!" + +Hodder did not speak at once. He was wondering, now that she had renewed +her friendship with Mr. Bentley, whether certain revelations on her part +were not inevitable . . . . + +She was regarding him, and he was aware that her curiosity was aflame. +Again he wondered whether it were curiosity or--interest. + +"You did not tell me, when we met in the Park, that you were no longer +at St. John's." + +Did Mr. Bentley tell you?" + +"No. He merely said he saw a great deal of you. Martha Preston told me. +She is still here, and goes to church occasionally. She was much +surprised to learn that you were in the city. + +"I am still living in the parish house," he said. "I am--taking my +vacation." + +"With Mr. Bentley?" Her eyes were still on his face. + +"With Mr. Bentley," he replied. + +He had spoken without bitterness. Although there had indeed been +bitterness in his soul, it passed away in the atmosphere of Mr. Bentley's +house. The process now taking place in him was the same complication of +negative and positive currents he had felt in her presence before. He +was surprised to find that his old antipathy to agnosticism held over, +in her case; to discover, now, that he was by no means, as yet, in view +of the existence of Horace Bentley, to go the full length of unbelief! +On the other hand, he saw that she had divined much of what had happened +to him, and he felt radiating from her a sympathetic understanding which +seemed almost a claim. She had a claim, although he could not have said +of what it was constituted. Their personal relationship bore +responsibilities. It suddenly came over him, in fact, that the two +persons who in all the world were nearest him were herself and Mr. +Bentley! He responded, scarce knowing why he did so, to the positive +current. + +"With Mr. Bentley," he repeated, smiling, and meeting her eyes, "I have +been learning something about the actual conditions of life in a modern +city." + +She bent a little toward him in one of those spontaneous movements that +characterized her. + +"Tell me--what is his life?" she asked. "I have seen so little of it, +and he has told me nothing himself. At first, in the Park, I saw only a +kindly old gentleman, with a wonderful, restful personality, who had been +a dear friend of my mother's. I didn't connect those boys with him. But +since then--since I have been here twice, I have seen other things which +make me wonder how far his influence extends." She paused. + +"I, too, have wondered," said the rector, thoughtfully. "When I met him, +I supposed he were merely living in simple relationships with his +neighbours here in Dalton Street, but by degrees I have discovered that +his relationships are as wide as the city itself. And they have grown +naturally--by radiation, as it were. One incident has led to another, +one act of kindness to another, until now there seems literally no end to +the men and women with whom he is in personal touch, who are ready to do +anything in their power for him at any time. It is an institution, in +fact, wholly unorganized, which in the final analysis is one man. And +there is in it absolutely nothing of that element which has come to be +known as charity." + +Alison listened with parted lips. + +"To give you an example," he went on, gradually be coming fired by his +subject, by her absorption, "since you have mentioned Mrs. Garvin, I will +tell you what happened in that case. It is typical of many. It was a +question of taking care of this woman, who was worn out and crushed, +until she should recover sufficiently to take care of herself. Mr. +Bentley did not need any assistance from me to get the boy into the +hospital--Dr. Jarvis worships him. But the mother. I might possibly +have got her into an institutional home--Mr. Bentley did better than +that, far better. On the day of the funeral we went directly from the +cemetery to the house of a widow who owns a little fruit farm beyond the +Park. Her name is Bledsoe, and it is not an exaggeration to say that her +house, small as it is, contains an endowed room always at Mr. Bentley's +disposal. + +"Mrs. Garvin is there now. She was received as a friend, as a guest-- +not as an inmate, a recipient of charity. I shall never forget how that +woman ran out in the sun when she saw us coming, how proud she was to be +able to do this thing, how she ushered us into the little parlour, that +was all swept and polished, and how naturally and warmly she welcomed the +other woman, dazed and exhausted, and took her hat and veil and almost +carried her up the stairs. And later on I found out from Miss Grower, +who lives here, Mrs. Bledsoe's history. Eight or nine years ago her +husband was sent to prison for forgery, and she was left with four small +children, on the verge of a fate too terrible to mention. She was +brought to Mr. Bentley's attention, and he started her in life. + +"And now Mrs. Garvin forms another link to that chain, which goes on +growing. In a month she will be earning her own living as stenographer +for a grain merchant whom Mr. Bentley set on his feet several years ago. +One thing has led to the next. And--I doubt if any neighbourhood could +be mentioned, north or south or west, or even in the business portion +of the city itself, where men and women are not to be found ready and +eager to do anything in their power for him. Of course there have been +exceptions, what might be called failures in the ordinary terminology +of charity, but there are not many." + +When he had finished she sat quite still, musing over what he had told +her, her eyes alight. + +"Yes, it is wonderful," she said at length, in a low voice. "Oh, I can +believe in that, making the world a better place to live in, making +people happier. Of course every one cannot be like Mr. Bentley, but all +may do their share in their own way. If only we could get rid of this +senseless system of government that puts a premium on the acquisition of +property! As it is, we have to depend on individual initiative. Even +the good Mr. Bentley does is a drop in the ocean compared to what might +be done if all this machinery--which has been invented, if all these +discoveries of science, by which the forces of an indifferent nature have +been harnessed, could be turned to the service of all mankind. Think of +how many Mrs. Garvins, of how many Dalton Streets there are in the world, +how many stunted children working in factories or growing up into +criminals in the slums! I was reading a book just the other day on the +effect of the lack of nutrition on character. We are breeding a million +degenerate citizens by starving them, to say nothing of the effect of +disease and bad air, of the constant fear of poverty that haunts the +great majority of homes. There is no reason why that fear should not be +removed, why the latest discoveries in medicine and science should not be +at the disposal of all." + +The genuineness of her passion was unmistakable. His whole being +responded to it. + +"Have you always felt like this?" he asked. Like what?" + +"Indignant--that so many people were suffering." + +His question threw her into reflection. + +"Why, no," she answered, at length, "I never thought----I see what you +mean. Four or five years ago, when I was going to socialist lectures, +my sense of all this--inequality, injustice was intellectual. I didn't +get indignant over it, as I do now when I think of it." + +"And why do you get indignant now?" + +"You mean," she asked, "that I have no right to be indignant, since I do +nothing to attempt to better conditions?--" + +"Not at all," Hodder disavowed. "Perhaps my question is too personal, +but I didn't intend it to be. I was merely wondering whether any event +or series of events had transformed a mere knowledge of these conditions +into feeling." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, but not in offence. Once more she relapsed into +thought. And as he watched her, in silence, the colour that flowed and +ebbed in her cheeks registered the coming and going of memories; of +incidents in her life hidden from him, arousing in the man the torture +of jealousy. But his faculties, keenly alert, grasped the entire field; +marked once more the empirical trait in her that he loved her unflinching +willingness to submit herself to an experiment. + +"I suppose so," she replied at length, her thoughts naturally assuming +speech. "Yes, I can see that it is so. Yet my experience has not been +with these conditions with which Mr. Bentley, with which you have been +brought in contact, but with the other side--with luxury. Oh, I am sick +of luxury! I love it, I am not at all sure that I could do without it, +but I hate it, too, I rebel against it. You can't understand that." + +"I think I can," he answered her. + +"When I see the creatures it makes," she cried, "I hate it. My +profession has brought me in such close contact with it that I rebelled +at last, and came out here very suddenly, just to get away from it in the +mass. To renew my youth, if I could. The gardens were only an excuse. +I had come to a point where I wanted to be quiet, to be alone, to think, +and I knew my father would be going away. So much of my girlhood was +spent in that Park that I know every corner of it, and I--obeyed the +impulse. I wanted to test it." + +"Yes," he said, absorbed. + +"I might have gone to the mountains or the sea, but some one would have +come and found me, and I should have been bound again--on the wheel. +I shouldn't have had the strength to resist. But here--have you ever +felt," she demanded, "that you craved a particular locality at a certain +time?" + +He followed her still. + +"That is how I felt. These associations, that Park, the thought of my +girlhood, of my mother, who understood me as no one else has since, +assumed a certain value. New York became unbearable. It is just +there, in the very centre of our modern civilization, that one sees +the crudest passions. Oh, I have often wondered whether a man, however +disillusioned, could see New York as a woman sees it when the glamour is +gone. We are the natural prey of the conqueror still. We dream of +independence--" + +She broke off abruptly. + +This confession, with the sudden glimpse it gave him of the fires within +her that would not die down, but burned now more fiercely than ever, +sent the blood to his head. His face, his temples, were hot with the +fierceness of his joy in his conviction that she had revealed herself to +him. Why she had done so, he could not say. . . This was the woman +whom the world thought composed; who had triumphed over its opposition, +compelled it to bow before her; who presented to it that self-possessed, +unified personality by which he had been struck at their first meeting. +Yet, paradoxically, the personality remained,--was more elusive than +before. A thousand revelations, he felt, would not disclose it. + +He was no nearer to solving it now. . Yet the fires burned! She, too, +like himself, was aflame and unsatisfied! She, too, had tasted success, +and had revolted! + +"But I don't get anywhere," she said wearily. "At times I feel this +ferment, this anger that things are as they are, only to realize what +helpless anger it is. Why not take the world as it appears and live and +feel, instead of beating against the currents?" + +"But isn't that inconsistent with what you said awhile ago as to a new +civilization?" Hodder asked. + +"Oh, that Utopia has no reality for me. I think it has, at moments, but +it fades. And I don't pretend to be consistent. Mr. Bentley lives in a +world of his own; I envy him with all my heart, I love and admire him, +he cheers and soothes me when I am with him. But I can't see--whatever +he sees. I am only aware of a remorseless universe grinding out its +destinies. We Anglo-Saxons are fond of deceiving ourselves about life, +of dressing it up in beautiful colours, of making believe that it +actually contains happiness. All our fiction reflects this--that is +why I never cared to read English or American novels. The Continental +school, the Russians, the Frenchmen, refuse to be deluded. They are +honest." + +"Realism, naturalism," he mused, recalling a course in philosophy, "one +would expect the Russian, in the conditions under which he lives, +possessing an artistic temperament combined with a paralysis of the +initiative and a sense of fate, to write in that way. And the Frenchmen, +Renan, Zola, and the others who have followed, are equally deterministic, +but viewing the human body as a highly organized machine with which we +may amuse ourselves by registering its sensations. These literatures are +true in so far as they reflect the characteristics of the nations from +which they spring. That is not to say that the philosophies of which +they are the expressions are true. Nor is it to admit that such a +literature is characteristic of the spirit of America, and can be applied +without change to our life and atmosphere. We have yet, I believe, to +develop our own literature; which will come gradually as we find +ourselves." + +"Find ourselves?" she repeated. + +"Yes. Isn't that what we are trying to do? We are not determinists or +fatalists, and to condemn us to such a philosophy would be to destroy us. +We live on hope. In spite of our apparent materialism, we are idealists. +And is it not possible to regard nature as governed by laws--remorseless, +if you like the word--and yet believe, with Kant and Goethe, that there +is an inner realm? You yourself struggle--you cling to ideals." + +"Ideals!" she echoed. "Ideals are useless unless one is able to see, to +feel something beyond this ruthless mechanism by which we are surrounded +and hemmed in, to have some perception of another scheme. Why struggle, +unless we struggle for something definite? Oh, I don't mean heavenly +rewards. Nothing could be more insipid and senseless than the orthodox +view of the hereafter. I am talking about a scheme of life here and +now." + +"So am I," answered Hodder. "But may there not be a meaning in this very +desire we have to struggle against the order of things as it appears to +us?" + +"A meaning?" + +"A little while ago you spoke of your indignation at the inequalities and +injustices of the world, and when I asked you if you had always felt +this, you replied that this feeling had grown upon you. My question is +this: whether that indignation would be present at all if it were not +meant to be turned into action." + +"You believe that an influence is at work, an influence that impels us +against our reason?" + +"I should like to think so," he said. "Why should so many persons be +experiencing such a feeling to-day, persons who, like yourself, are the +beneficiaries of our present system of privilege? Why should you, who +have every reason to be satisfied, materially, with things as they are, +be troubling yourself with thoughts of others who are less-fortunate? +And why should we have the spectacle, today, of men and women all over +this country in social work, in science and medicine and politics, +striving to better conditions while most of them might be much more +comfortable and luxurious letting well enough alone?" + +"But it's human to care," she objected. + +"Ah--human!" he said, and was silent. "What do we mean by human, unless +it is the distinguishing mark of something within us that the natural +world doesn't possess? Unless it is the desire and willingness to strive +for a larger interest than the individual interest, work and suffer for +others? And you spoke of making people happier. What do you mean by +happiness? Not merely the possession of material comforts, surely. I +grant you that those who are overworked and underfed, who are burning +with the consciousness of wrongs, who have no outlook ahead, are +essentially hopeless and miserable. But by 'happiness' you, mean +something more than the complacency and contentment which clothing and +food might bring, and the removal of the economic fear,--and even the +restoration of self-respect." + +"That their lives should be fuller!" she exclaimed. + +"That drudgery and despair should be replaced by interest and hope," he +went on, "slavery by freedom. In other words, that the whole attitude +toward life should be changed, that life should appear a bright thing +rather than a dark thing, that labour should be willing vicarious instead +of forced and personal. Otherwise, any happiness worth having is out of +the question." + +She was listening now with parted lips, apparently unconscious of the +fixity of her gaze. + +"You mean it is a choice between that or nothing," she said, in a low +voice. "That there is no use in lifting people out of the treadmill-- +and removing the terror of poverty unless you can give them something +more--than I have got." + +"And something more--than I have got,"--he was suddenly moved to reply... + +Presently, while the silence still held between them, the door opened and +startled them into reality. Mr. Bentley came in. + +The old gentleman gave no sign, as they rose to meet him, of a sense of +tension in the atmosphere he had entered--yet each felt--somehow, that he +knew. The tension was released. The same thought occurred to both as +they beheld the peaceful welcome shining in his face, "Here is what we +are seeking. Why try to define it?" + +"To think that I have been gossiping with Mrs. Meyer, while you were +waiting for me!" he said. "She keeps the little florist's shop at the +corner of Tower Street, and she gave me these. I little guessed what +good use I should have for them, my dear." + +He held out to her three fragrant, crimson roses that matched the +responsive colour in her cheeks as she thanked him and pinned them on her +gown. He regarded her an instant. + +"But I'm sure Mr. Hodder has entertained you," Mr. Bentley turned, and +laid his hand on the rector's shoulder. + +"Most successfully," said Alison, cutting short his protest. And she +smiled at Hodder, faintly. + + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM + + +I + +Hodder, in spite of a pressing invitation to remain for supper, had left +them together. He turned his face westward, in the opposite direction +from the parish house, still under the spell of that moment of communion +which had lasted--he knew not how long, a moment of silent revelation to +them both. She, too, was storm-tossed! She, too, who had fared forth so +gallantly into life, had conquered only to be beaten down--to lose her +way. + +This discovery strained the very fibres of his being. So close he had +been to her--so close that each had felt, simultaneously, complete +comprehension of the other, comprehension that defied words, overbore +disagreements. He knew that she had felt it. He walked on at first in a +bewildered ecstasy, careless of aught else save that in a moment they two +had reached out in the darkness and touched hands. Never had his +experience known such communion, never had a woman meant what this woman +meant, and yet he could not define that meaning. What need of religion, +of faith in an unseen order when this existed? To have this woman in the +midst of chaos would be enough! + +Faith in an unseen order! As he walked, his mind returned to the +argument by which he had sought to combat her doubts--and his own. +Whence had the argument come? It was new to him--he had never formulated +it before--that pity and longing and striving were a justification and a +proof. Had she herself inspired, by some unknown psychological law, this +first attempt of his to reform the universe, this theory which he had +rather spoken than thought? Or had it been the knowledge of her own +longing, and his desire to assuage it? As twilight fell, as his spirits +ebbed, he could not apply it now--it meant nothing to him, evaded him, +there was in it no solace. To regain his footing once more, to climb +again without this woman whom he needed, and might not have! Better to +fall, to be engulfed. . . The vision of her, tall and straight, with +the roses on her breast, tortured him. + +Thus ecstasy ebbed to despondency. He looked around him in the fading +day, to find himself opposite the closed gates of the Botanical Gardens, +in the southwestern portion of the city . . . . An hour later he had +made his way back to Dalton Street with its sputtering blue lights and +gliding figures, and paused for a moment on the far sidewalk to gaze at +Mr. Bentley's gleaming windows. Should he go in? Had that personality +suddenly lost its power over him? How strange that now he could see +nothing glowing, nothing inspiring within that house,--only a kindly old +man reading a newspaper! + +He walked on, slowly, to feel stealing on him that desperate longing for +adventure which he had known so well in his younger days. And he did not +resist. The terror with which it had once inspired him was gone, or +lingered only in the form of a delicious sense of uncertainty and +anticipation. Anything might happen to him--anything would be grateful; +the thought of his study in the parish house was unbearable; the Dalton +Street which had mocked and repelled him suddenly became alluring with +its champaigns of light and inviting stretches of darkness. In the block +ahead, rising out of the night like a tower blazing with a hundred +beacons, Hodder saw a hotel, heard the faint yet eager throbbing of +music, beheld silhouetted figures flitting from automobiles and carriages +across the white glare of the pavement,--figures of men and women. + +He hastened his steps, the music grew louder and louder in his ears, he +gained the ornamental posts crowned by their incandescent globes, made +his way through the loiterers, descended the stone steps of the +restaurant, and stood staring into it as at a blurred picture. The band +crashed a popular two-step above the mingled voices and laughter. He sat +down at a vacant table near the door, and presently became aware that a +waiter had been for some time at his elbow. + +"What will you have, sir?" + +Then he remembered that he had not eaten, discovered that he was hungry, +and ordered some sandwiches and beer. Still staring, the figures began +to differentiate themselves, although they all appeared, somehow, in +perpetual motion; hurrying, though seated. It was like gazing at a +quivering cinematograph. Here and there ribbons of smoke curled upward, +adding volume to the blue cloud that hung over the tables, which in turn +was dissipated in spots by the industrious electric fans. Everywhere he +looked he met the glances of women; even at the table next him, they were +not so absorbed in their escorts as to be able to resist flinging +him covert stares between the shrieks of laughter in which they +intermittently indulged. The cumulative effect of all these faces was +intoxicating, and for a long time he was unable to examine closely any +one group. What he saw was a composite woman with flushed cheeks and +soliciting eyes, becomingly gowned and hatted--to the masculine judgment. +On the walls, heavily frescoed in the German style, he read, in Gothic +letters: + + "Wer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, and Gesang, + Er bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang." + +The waiter brought the sandwiches and beer, yet he did not eat. In the +middle distance certain figures began insistently to stand out,--figures +of women sitting alone wherever he looked he met a provoking gaze. One +woman, a little farther away than the rest, seemed determinedly bent on +getting a nod of recognition, and it was gradually borne in upon Hodder's +consciousness that her features were familiar. In avoiding her eyes he +studied the men at the next table,--or rather one of them, who loudly +ordered the waiters about, who told brief anecdotes that were +uproariously applauded; whose pudgy, bejewelled fingers were continually +feeling for the bottle in the ice beside his chair, or nudging his +companions with easy familiarity; whose little eyes, set in a heavy face, +lighted now and again with a certain expression . . . . . + +Suddenly Hodder pushed back his chair and got to his feet, overcome by a +choking sensation like that of being, asphyxiated by foul gases. He must +get out at once, or faint. What he had seen in the man's eyes had +aroused in him sheer terror, for it was the image of something in his +own soul which had summarily gained supremacy and led him hither, +unresisting, to its own abiding-place. In vain he groped to reconstruct +the process by which that other spirit--which he would fain have believed +his true spirit--had been drugged and deadened in its very flight. + +He was aware, as he still stood uncertainly beside the table, of the +white-aproned waiter looking at him, and of some one else!--the woman +whose eyes had been fastened on him so persistently. She was close +beside him, speaking to him. + +"Seems to me we've met before." + +He looked at her, at first uncomprehendingly, then with a dawning +realization of her identity. Even her name came to him, unexpectedly,-- +Kate Marcy,--the woman in the flat! + +"Ain't you going to invite me to have some supper?" she whispered +eagerly, furtively, as one accustomed to be rebuffed, yet bold in spite +of it. "They'll throw me out if they think I'm accosting you." + +How was it that, a moment ago, she had appeared to him mysterious, +inviting? At this range he could only see the paint on her cheeks, the +shadows under her burning eyes, the shabby finery of her gown. Her +wonderful bronze hair only made the contrast more pitiful. He acted +automatically, drawing out for her the chair opposite his own, and sat +down again. + +"Say, but I'm hungry!" she exclaimed, pulling off her gloves. She smiled +at him, wanly, yet with a brazen coquettishness become habit. + +"Hungry!" he repeated idly. + +"I guess you'd be, if you'd only had a fried egg and a cup of coffee to- +day, and nothing last night." + +He pushed over to her, hastily, with a kind of horror, the plate of +sandwiches. She began eating them ravenously; but presently paused, and +thrust them back toward him. He shook his head. + +"What's the matter with you?" she demanded. + +"Nothing," he replied. + +"You ordered them, didn't you? Ain't you eating anything?" + +"I'm not hungry," he said. + +She continued eating awhile without comment. And he watched her as one +fascinated, oblivious to his surroundings, in a turmoil of thought and +emotion. + +"I'm dry," she announced meaningly. + +He hesitated a moment, and then gave her the bottle of beer. She made a +wry face as she poured it out. + +"Have they run out of champagne?" she inquired. + +This time he did not hesitate. The women of his acquaintance, at the +dinner parties he attended, drank champagne. Why should he refuse it to +this woman? A long-nosed, mediaeval-looking waiter was hovering about, +one of those bizarre, battered creatures who have long exhausted the +surprises of life, presiding over this amazing situation with all the +sang froid of a family butler. Hodder told him to bring champagne. + +"What kind, sir?" he asked, holding out a card. + +"The best you have." + +The woman stared at him in wonder. + +"You're what an English Johnny I know would call a little bit of all +right!" she declared with enthusiastic approval. + +"Since you are hungry," he went on, "suppose you have something more +substantial than sandwiches. What would you like?" + +She did not answer at once. Amazement grew in her eyes, amazement and a +kind of fear. + +"Quit joshing!" she implored him, and he found it difficult to cope with +her style of conversation. For a while she gazed helplessly at the bill +of fare. + +"I guess you'll think it's funny," she said hesitatingly, "but I feel +just like a good beefsteak and potatoes. Bring a thick one, Walter." + +The waiter sauntered off. + +"Why should I think it strange?" Hodder asked. + +"Well, if you knew how many evenings I've sat up there in my room and +thought what I'd order if I ever again got hold of some rich guy who'd +loosen up. There ain't any use trying to put up a bluff with you. +Nothing was too good for me once, caviar, pate de foie gras" (her +pronunciation is not to be imitated), "chicken casserole, peach Melba, +filet of beef with mushrooms,--I've had 'em all, and I used to sit up and +say I'd hand out an order like that. You never do what you think you're +going to do in this life." + +The truth of this remark struck him with a force she did not suspect; +stung him, as it were, into a sense of reality. + +"And now," she added pathetically, "all t want is a beefsteak! Don't +that beat you?" + +She appeared so genuinely surprised at this somewhat contemptible trick +fate had played her that Hodder smiled in spite of himself. + +"I didn't recognize you at first in that get-up," she observed, looking +at his blue serge suit. "So you've dropped the preacher business, have +you? You're wise, all right." + +"Why do you say that?" he asked. + +"Didn't I tell you when you came 'round that time that you weren't like +the rest of 'em? You're too human." + +Once more the word, and on her lips, startled him. + +"Some of the best men I have ever known, the broadest and most +understanding men, have been clergymen," he found himself protesting. + +"Well, they haven't dropped in on me. The only one I ever saw that +measured up to something like that was you, and now you've chucked it." + +Had he, as she expressed the matter, "chucked it"? Her remark brought +him reluctantly, fearfully, remorselessly--agitated and unprepared as +he was--face to face with his future. + +"You were too good for the job," she declared. "What is there in it? +There ain't nobody converted these days that I can see, and what's the +use of gettin' up and preach into a lot of sapheads that don't know what +religion is? Sure they don't." + +"Do you?" he asked. + +"You've called my bluff." She laughed. "Say, do YOU?" If there was +anything in it you'd have kept on preachin' to that bunch and made some +of 'em believe they was headed for hell; you'd have made one of 'em that +owns the flat house I live in, who gets fancy rents out of us poor girls, +give it up. That's a nice kind of business for a church member, ain't +it?" + +"Owns the house in which you live!" + +"Sure." She smiled at him compassionately, pitying his innocence and +ignorance. "Now I come to think of it, I guess he don't go to your +church,--it's the big Baptist church on the boulevard. But what's the +difference?" + +"None," said Hodder, despondently. + +She regarded him curiously. + +"You remember when you dropped in that night, when the kid was sick?" + +He nodded. + +"Well, now you ain't in the business any more, I may as well tell you you +kind of got in on me. I was sorry for you--honest, I was. I couldn't +believe at first you was on the level, but it didn't take me long to see +that they had gold-bricked you, too. I saw you weren't wise to what they +were." + +"You thought--" he began and paused dumfounded. + +"Why not?" she retorted. "It looked easy to me,--your line. How was I +to know at first that they had you fooled? How was I to know you wasn't +in the game?" + +"The game?" + +"Say, what else is it but a game? You must be on now, ain't you? Why. +do they put up to keep the churches going? There ain't any coupons +coming out of 'em. + +"Maybe some of these millionaires think they can play all the horses and +win,--get into heaven and sell gold bricks on the side. But I guess most +of 'em don't think about heaven. They just use the church for a front, +and take in strangers in the back alley,--downtown." + +Hodder was silent, overwhelmed by the brutal aptness of her figures. Nor +did he take the trouble of a defence, of pointing out that hers was not +the whole truth. What really mattered--he saw--was what she and those +like her thought. Such minds were not to be disabused by argument; and +indeed he had little inclination for it then. + +"There's nothing in it." + +By this expression he gathered she meant life. And some hidden impulse +bade him smile at her. + +"There is this," he answered. + +She opened her mouth, closed it and stared at him, struck by his +expression, striving uneasily to fathom hidden depths in his remark. + +"I don't get on to you," she said lamely. "I didn't that other time. +I never ran across anybody like you." + +He tried to smile again. + +"You mustn't mind me," he answered. + +They fell into an oasis of silence, surrounded by mad music and laughter. +Then came the long-nosed waiter carrying the beefsteak aloft, followed by +a lad with a bucket of ice, from which protruded the green and gold neck +of a bottle. The plates were put down, the beefsteak carved, the +champagne opened and poured out with a flourish. The woman raised her +glass. + +"Here's how!" she said, with an attempt at gayety. And she drank to him. +"It's funny how I ran across you again, ain't it?" She threw back her +head and laughed. + +He raised his glass, tasted the wine, and put it down again. A sheet of +fire swept through him. + +"What's the matter with it? Is it corked?" she demanded. "It goes to +the right spot with me." + +"It seems very good," he said, trying to smile, and turning to the food +on his plate. The very idea of eating revolted him--and yet he made the +attempt: he had a feeling, ill defined, that consequences of vital +importance depended upon this attempt, on his natural acceptance of the +situation. And, while he strove to reduce the contents of his plate, +he racked his brain for some subject of conversation. The flamboyant +walls of the room pressed in on every side; comment of that which lay +within their limits was impossible,--but he could not, somehow, get +beyond them. Was there in the whole range of life one easy topic which +they might share in common? Yet a bond existed between this woman and +himself--a bond of which he now became aware, and which seemed strangely +to grow stronger as the minutes passed and no words were spoken. Why was +it that she, too, to whom speech came so easily, had fallen dumb? He +began to long for some remark, however disconcerting. The tension +increased. + +She put down her knife and fork. Tears sprang into her eyes,--tears of +anger, he thought. + +"Say, it's no use trying to put up a bluff with me," she cried. + +"Why do you say that?" he asked. + +"You know what I mean, all right. What did you come in here for, +anyway?" + +"I don't know--I couldn't tell you," he answered. + +The very honesty of his words seemed, for an instant, to disconcert her; +and she produced a torn lace handkerchief, which she thrust in her eyes. + +"Why can't you leave me alone?" she demanded. "I'm all right." + +If he did not at once reply, it was because of some inner change which +had taken place in himself; and he seemed to see things, suddenly, in +their true proportions. He no longer feared a scene and its +consequences. By virtue of something he had cast off or taken on, +he was aware of a newly acquired mastery of the situation, and by a +hidden and unconscious process he had managed to get at the real woman +behind the paint: had beaten down, as it were without a siege, her +defences. And he was incomparably awed by the sight of her quivering, +frightened self. + +Her weeping grew more violent. He saw the people at the next table turn +and stare, heard the men laughing harshly. For the spectacle was +evidently not an uncommon one here. She pushed away her unfinished +glass, gathered up her velvet bag and rose abruptly. + +"I guess I ain't hungry after all," she said, and started toward the +door. He turned to the waiter, who regarded him unmoved, and asked for a +check. + +"I'll get it," he said. + +Hodder drew out a ten dollar bill, and told him to keep the change. The +waiter looked at him. Some impulse moved him to remark, as he picked up +the rector's hat: + +"Don't let her put it over you, sir." + +Hodder scarcely heard him. He hurried up the steps and gained the +pavement, and somewhere in the black shadows beyond the arc-lights he saw +her disappearing down the street. Careless of all comment he hastened +on, overtook her, and they walked rapidly side by side. Now and again he +heard a sob, but she said nothing. Thus they came to the house where the +Garvins had lived, and passed it, and stopped in front of the dimly +lighted vestibule of the flats next door. In drawing the key from her +bag she dropped it: he picked it up and put it in the lock himself. She +led the way without comment up the darkened stairs, and on the landing +produced another key, opened the door of her rooms, fumbled for the +electric button, and suddenly the place was flooded with light. He +glanced in, and recoiled. + + + +II + +Oddly enough, the first thing he noticed in the confusion that reigned +was the absence of the piano. Two chairs were overturned, and one of +them was broken; a siphon of vichy lay on the floor beside a crushed +glass and two or three of the cheap ornaments that had been swept off +the mantel and broken on the gaudy tiles of the hearth. He glanced at +the woman, who had ceased crying, and stood surveying the wreckage with +the calmness, the philosophic nonchalance of a class that comes to look +upon misfortune as inevitable. + +"They didn't do a thing to this place, did they?" was her comment. +"There was two guys in here to-night who got a notion they were funny." + +Hodder had thought to have fathomed all the horrors of her existence, but +it was not until he looked into this room that the bottomless depths of +it were brought home to him. Could it be possible that the civilization +in which he lived left any human being so defenceless as to be at the +mercy of the ghouls who had been here? The very stale odours of the +spilled whiskey seemed the material expression of the essence of degraded +souls; for a moment it overpowered him. Then came the imperative need of +action, and he began to right one of the chairs. She darted forward. + +"Cut it out!" she cried. "What business have you got coming in here and +straightening up? I was a fool to bring you, anyway." + +It was in her eyes that he read her meaning, and yet could not credit it. +He was abashed--ashamed; nay, he could not define the feeling in his +breast. He knew that what he read was the true interpretation of her +speech, for in some manner--he guessed not how--she had begun to idealize +him, to feel that the touch of these things defiled him. + +"I believe I invited myself," he answered, with attempted cheerfulness. +Then it struck him, in his predicament, that this was precisely what +others had done! + +"When you asked me a little while ago whether I had left the Church, I +let you think I had. I am still connected with St. John's, but I do not +know how long I shall continue to be." + +She was on her knees with dustpan and whiskbroom, cleaning up the +fragments of glass on the stained carpet. And she glanced up at him +swiftly, diviningly. + +"Say--you're in trouble yourself, ain't you?" + +She got up impulsively, spilling some of the contents of the pan. A +subtle change had come in her, and under the gallantly drooping feathers +of her hat he caught her eye--the human eye that so marvellously reflects +the phases of the human soul: the eye which so short a time before +hardily and brazenly had flashed forth its invitation, now actually shone +with fellowship and sympathy. And for a moment this look was more +startling, more appalling than the other; he shrank from it, resented it +even more. Was it true that they had something in common? And if so, +was it sin or sorrow, or both? + +"I might have known," she said, staring at him. In spite of his gesture +of dissent, he saw that she was going over the events of the evening from +her new point of view. + +"I might have known, when we were sitting there in Harrods, that you were +up against it, too, but I couldn't think of anything but the way I was +fixed. The agent's been here twice this week for the rent, and I was +kind of desperate for a square meal." + +Hodder took the dustpan from her hand, and flung its contents into the +fireplace. + +"Then we are both fortunate," he said, "to have met each other." + +"I don't see where you come in," she told him. + +He turned and smiled at her. + +"Do you remember when I was here that evening about two months ago I said +I should like to be your friend? Well, I meant it. And I have often +hoped, since then, that some circumstance might bring us together again. +You seemed to think that no friendship was possible between us, but I +have tried to make myself believe that you said so because you didn't +know me." + +"Honest to God?" she asked. "Is that on the level?" + +"I only ask for an opportunity to prove it," he replied, striving to +speak naturally. He stooped and laid the dustpan on the hearth. +"There! Now let's sit down." + +She sank on the sofa, her breast rising and falling, her gaze dumbly +fixed on him, as one under hypnosis. He took the rocker. + +"I have wanted to tell you how grateful Mrs. Garvin, the boy's mother-- +was for the roses you brought. She doesn't know who sent them, but I +intend to tell her, and she will thank you herself. She is living out +in the country. And the boy--you would scarcely recognize him." + +"I couldn't play the piano for a week after--that thing happened." She +glanced at the space where the instrument had stood. + +"You taught yourself to play?" he asked. + +"I had music lessons." + +"Music lessons?" + +"Not here--before I left home--up the State, in a little country town,-- +Madison. It seems like a long time ago, but it's only seven years in +September. Mother and father wanted all of us children to know a little +more than they did, and I guess they pinched a good deal to give us a +chance. I went a year to the high school, and then I was all for coming +to the city--I couldn't stand Madison, there wasn't anything going on. +Mother was against it,--said I was too good-looking to leave home. I +wish I never had. You wouldn't believe I was good-looking once, would +you?" + +She spoke dispassionately, not seeming to expect assent, but Hodder +glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off +her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,--and +suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped +the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which she now lived. + +"I was a fool to come, but I couldn't see it then. All I could think of +was to get away to a place where something was happening. I wanted to +get into Ferguson's--everybody in Madison knew about Ferguson's, what a +grand store it was,--but I couldn't. And after a while I got a place at +the embroidery counter at Pratt's. That's a department store, too, you +know. It looked fine, but it wasn't long before I fell wise to a few +things." (She relapsed into slang occasionally.) "Have you ever tried +to stand on your feet for nine hours, where you couldn't sit down for a +minute? Say, when Florry Kinsley and me--she was the girl I roomed with +--would get home at night, often we'd just lie down and laugh and cry, we +were so tired, and our feet hurt so. We were too used up sometimes to +get up and cook supper on the little stove we had. And sitting around a +back bedroom all evening was worse than Madison. We'd go out, tired as +we were, and walk the streets." + +He nodded, impressed by the fact that she did not seem to be appealing +to his sympathy. Nor, indeed, did she appear--in thus picking up the +threads of her past--to be consciously accounting for her present. +She recognized no causation there. + +"Say, did you ever get to a place where you just had to have something +happen? When you couldn't stand bein' lonely night after night, when you +went out on the streets and saw everybody on the way to a good time but +you? We used to look in the newspapers for notices of the big balls, and +we'd take the cars to the West End and stand outside the awnings watching +the carriages driving up and the people coming in. And the same with +the weddings. We got to know a good many of the swells by sight. There +was Mrs. Larrabbee,"--a certain awe crept into her voice--"and Miss +Ferguson--she's sweet--and a lot more. Some of the girls used to copy +their clothes and hats, but Florry and me tried to live honest. It was +funny," she added irrelevantly, "but the more worn out we were at night, +the more we'd want a little excitement, and we used to go to the dance- +halls and keep going until we were ready to drop." + +She laughed at the recollection. + +"There was a floorwalker who never let me alone the whole time I was at +Pratt's--he put me in mind of a pallbearer. His name was Selkirk, and he +had a family in Westerly, out on the Grade Suburban . . . . Some of +the girls never came back at all, except to swagger in and buy expensive +things, and tell us we were fools to work. And after a while I noticed +Florry was getting discouraged. We never had so much as a nickel left +over on Saturdays and they made us sign a paper, when they hired us, that +we lived at home. It was their excuse for paying us six dollars a week. +They do it at Ferguson's, too. They say they can get plenty of girls who +do live at home. I made up my mind I'd go back to Madison, but I kept +putting it off, and then father died, and I couldn't! + +"And then, one day, Florry left. She took her things from the room when +I was at the store, and I never saw her again. I got another roommate. +I couldn't afford to pay for the room alone. You wouldn't believe I kept +straight, would you?" she demanded, with a touch of her former defiance. +"I had plenty of chances better than that floorwalker. But I knew I was +good looking, and I thought if I could only hold out I might get married +to some fellow who was well fixed. What's the matter?" + +Hodder's exclamation had been involuntary, for in these last words she +had unconsciously brought home to him the relentless predicament in the +lives of these women. She had been saving herself--for what? A more +advantageous, sale! + +"It's always been my luck," she went on reflectingly, "that when what I +wanted to happen did happen, I never could take advantage of it. It was +just like that to-night, when you handed me out the bill of fare, and +I ordered beefsteak. And it was like that when--when he came along-- +I didn't do what I thought I was going to do. It's terrible to fall in +love, isn't it? I mean the real thing. I've read in books that it only +comes once, and I guess it's so." + +Fortunately she seemed to expect no answer to this query. She was +staring at the wall with unseeing eyes. + +"I never thought of marrying him, from the first. He could have done +anything with me--he was so good and generous--and it was him I was +thinking about. That's love, isn't it? Maybe you don't believe a woman +like me knows what love is. You've got a notion that goin' downhill, as +I've been doing, kills it, haven't you? I Wish to God it did--but it +don't: the ache's there, and sometimes it comes in the daytime, and +sometimes at night, and I think I'll go crazy. When a woman like me is +in love there isn't anything more terrible on earth, I tell you. If a +girl's respectable and good it's bad enough, God knows, if she can't have +the man she wants; but when she's like me--it's hell. That's the only +way I can describe it. She feels there is nothing about her that's +clean, that he wouldn't despise. There's many a night I wished I could +have done what Garvin did, but I didn't have the nerve." + +"Don't say that!" he commanded sharply. + +"Why not? It's the best way out." + +"I can see how one might believe it to be," he answered. Indeed, it +seemed that his vision had been infinitely extended, that he had suddenly +come into possession of the solution of all the bewildered, despairing +gropings of the human soul. Only awhile ago, for instance, the mood of +self-destruction had been beyond his imagination: tonight he understood +it, though he still looked upon it with horror. And he saw that his +understanding of her--or of any human being--could never be of the +intellect. He had entered into one of those astounding yet simple +relationships wherein truth, and truth alone, is possible. He knew +that such women lied, deceived themselves; he could well conceive that +the image of this first lover might have become idealized in her +vicissitudes; that the memories of the creature-comforts, of first +passion, might have enhanced as the victim sank. It was not only +because she did not attempt to palliate that he believed her. + +"I remember the time I met him,--it was only four years ago last spring, +but it seems like a lifetime. It was Decoration Day, and it was so +beautiful I went out with another girl to the Park, and we sat on the +grass and looked at the sky and wished we lived in the country. He was +in an automobile; I never did know exactly how it happened,--we looked at +each other, and he slowed up and came back and asked us to take a ride. +I had never been in one of those things--but that wasn't why I went, +I guess. Well, the rest was easy. He lost his head, and I was just as +bad. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how rich he was: it scared me +when I found out about him, and he was so handsome and full of fun and +spirits, and generous! I never knew anybody like him. Honest, I never +expected he'd want to marry me. He didn't at first,--it was only after +a while. I never asked him to, and when he began to talk about it I told +him it would cut him off from his swell friends, and I knew his father +might turn him loose. Oh, it wasn't the money! Well, he'd get mad all +through, and say he never got along with the old man, and that his +friends would have to take me, and he couldn't live without me. He said +he would have me educated, and bought me books, and I tried to read them. +I'd have done anything for him. He'd knocked around a good deal since +he'd been to Harvard College,--he wasn't what you'd call a saint, but his +heart was all right. And he changed, too, I could see it. He said he +was going to make something out of himself. + +"I didn't think it was possible to be so happy, but I had a feeling all +along, inside of me, that it couldn't come off. I had a little flat in +Rutger Street, over on the south side, and everything in the world I +wanted. Well, one day, sure enough, the bell rang and I opened the door, +and there stood a man with side whiskers staring at me, and staring until +I was frightened to death. I never saw such eyes as he had. And all of +a sudden I knew it was his father. + +"'Is this Miss Marcy?'" he said. + +"I couldn't say anything at all, but he handed me his card and smiled, +I'll never forget how he smiled--and came right in and sat down. I'd +heard of that man all my life, and how much money he'd made, and all +that. Why, up in Madison folks used to talk about him--" she checked +herself suddenly and stared at Hodder in consternation. "Maybe you know +him!" she exclaimed. "I never thought!" + +"Maybe I do," he assented wearily. In the past few moments suspicion had +become conviction. + +"Well--what difference does it make--now? It's all over, and I'm not +going to bother him. I made up my mind I wouldn't, on account of him, +you understand. I never fell that low--thank God!" + +Hodder nodded. He could not speak . . . . The woman seemed to be +living over again that scene, in her imagination. + +"I just couldn't realize who it was sitting there beside me, but if I +hadn't known it wouldn't have made any difference. He could have done +anything with me, anyway, and he knew how to get at me. He said, now +that he'd seen me, that he was sure I was a good girl at the bottom and +loved his son, and that I wouldn't want to ruin the boy when he had such +a big future ahead of him. I wouldn't have thought, to look at the man, +that he could have been so gentle. I made a fool of myself and cried, +and told him I'd go away and never see his son any more--that I'd always +been against marrying him. Well, he almost had tears in his eyes when he +thanked me and said I'd never regret it, and he pulled an envelope out of +his pocket. I said I wouldn't take any money, and gave it back to him. +I've always been sorry since that I didn't make him take it back--it +never did anything but harm to me. But he had his way. He laid it on +the table and said he wouldn't feel right, and took my hand--and I just +didn't care. + +"Well, what do you think I did after he'd gone? I went and played a +piece on the piano,--and I never can bear to hear that ragtime to this +day. I couldn't seem to feel anything. And after a while I got up and +opened the envelope--it was full of crackly new hundred dollar bills-- +thirty of 'em, and as I sat there staring at 'em the pain came on, like a +toothache, in throbs, getting worse all the time until I just couldn't +stand it. I had a notion of sending the money back even then, but I +didn't. I didn't know how to do it,--and as I told you, I wasn't able to +care much. Then I remembered I'd promised to go away, and I had to have +some money for that, and if I didn't leave right off I wouldn't have the +strength to do it. I hadn't even thought where to go: I couldn't think, +so I got dressed and went down to the depot anyway. It was one of those +bright, bitter cold winter days after a thaw when the icicles are hanging +everywhere. I went inside and walked up and down that long platform +under the glass roof. My, it was cold in there! I looked over all the +signs, and made up my mind I'd go to Chicago. + +"I meant to work, I never meant to spend the money, but to send it back. +I'd put it aside--and then I'd go and take a little. Say, it was easy +not to work--and I didn't care what happened to me as long as I wasn't +going to see him again. Well, I'm not trying to smooth it over, +I suppose there was something crooked about me from the start, but I just +went clean to hell with that money, and when I heard he'd gone away, +I came back here." + +"Something crooked!" The words rang in Hodder's ears, in his very soul. +How was he or any man to estimate, to unravel the justice from the +injustice, to pass upon the merit of this woman's punishment? Here +again, in this vitiated life, was only to be seen the remorseless working +of law--cause and effect. Crooked! Had not the tree been crooked from +the beginning--incapable of being straightened? She had herself naively +confessed it. Was not the twist ingrained? And if so, where was the +salvation he had preached? There was good in her still,--but what was +"good"? . . . He took no account of his profound compassion. + +What comfort could he give her, what hope could he hold out that the +twist, now gnarled and knotted, might be removed, that she might gain +peace of soul and body and the "happiness" of which he had talked with +Alison Parr? . . . He raised his eyes, to discover that the woman's +were fixed upon him, questioningly. + +"I suppose I was a fool to tell you," she said, with a shade of her old +bitterness; "it can't do any good." Her next remark was startlingly +astute. "You've found out for yourself, I guess, that all this talk +about heaven and hell and repentance don't amount to anything. Hell +couldn't be any worse than I've been through, no matter how hot it is. +And heaven!" She laughed, burst into tears, and quickly dried them. +"You know the man I've been talking about, that bought me off. I didn't +intend to tell you, but I see you can't help knowing--Eldon Parr. I +don't say he didn't do right from his way of looking at things,--but say, +it wasn't exactly Christian, was it?" + +"No," he said, "it wasn't." He bowed his head, and presently, when he +raised it again, he caught something in her look that puzzled and +disturbed him--an element of adoration. + +"You're white through and through," she said, slowly and distinctly. + +And he knew not how to protest. + +"I'll tell you something," she went on, as one who has made a discovery. +"I liked you the first time you came in here--that night--when you wanted +me to be friends; well, there was something that seemed to make it +impossible then. I felt it, if you didn't." She groped for words. +"I can't explain what it was, but now it's gone. You're different. +I think a lot more of you. Maybe it's because of what you did at +Harrod's, sitting down with me and giving me supper when I was so hungry, +and the champagne. You weren't ashamed of me." + +"Good God, why should I have been!" he exclaimed. + +"You! Why shouldn't you?" she cried fiercely. + +There's hardly a man in that place that wouldn't have been. They all +know me by sight--and some of 'em better. You didn't see 'em grinning +when I came up to you, but I did. My God--it's awful--it's awful I...." +She burst into violent weeping, long deferred. + +He took her hand in his, and did not speak, waiting for the fit to spend +itself . . . . And after a while the convulsive shudders that shook +her gradually ceased. + +"You must trust me," he said. "The first thing tomorrow I'm going to +make arrangements for you to get out of these rooms. You can't stay here +any longer." + +"That's sure," she answered, trying to smile. "I'm broke. I even owe +the co--the policeman." + +"The policeman!" + +"He has to turn it in to Tom Beatty and the politicians" + +Beatty! Where had he heard the name? Suddenly it came to him that +Beatty was the city boss, who had been eulogized by Mr. Plimpton! + +"I have some good friends who will be glad to help you to get work--and +until you do get work. You will have to fight--but we all have to fight. +Will you try?" + +"Sure, I'll try," she answered, in a low voice. + +Her very tone of submission troubled him. And he had a feeling that, if +he had demanded, she would have acquiesced in anything. + +"We'll talk it over to-morrow," he went on, clinging to his note of +optimism. "We'll find out what you can do easiest, to begin with." + +"I might give music lessons," she suggested. + +The remark increased his uneasiness, for he recognized in it a sure +symptom of disease--a relapse into what might almost have been called +levity, blindness to the supreme tragedy of her life which but a moment +before had shaken and appalled her. He shook his head bravely. + +"I'm afraid that wouldn't do--at first." + +She rose and went into the other room, returning in a few moments with a +work basket, from which she drew a soiled and unfinished piece of +embroidery. + +"There's a bureau cover I started when I was at Pratt's," she said, as +she straightened it over her knees. "It's a copy of an expensive one. +I never had the patience to finish it, but one of the salesladies there, +who was an expert, told me it was pretty good: She taught me the stitch, +and I had a notion at that time I might make a little money for dresses +and the theatre. I was always clever with my hands." + +"The very thing!" he said, with hopeful emphasis. "I'm sure I can get +you plenty of it to do. And I'll come back in the morning." + +He gave it back to her, and as she was folding it his glance fell on a +photograph in the basket. + +"I kept it, I don't know why," he heard her say; "I didn't have the heart +to burn it." + +He started recovered himself, and rose. + +"I'll go to see the agent the first thing to-morrow," he said. "And +then--you'll be ready for me? You trust me?" + +"I'd do anything for you," was her tremulous reply. + +Her disquieting, submissive smile haunted him as he roped his way down +the stairs to the street, and then the face in the photograph replaced +it--the laughing eyes, the wilful, pleasure--loving mouth he had seen in +the school and college pictures of Preston Parr. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +By manipulation, by bribery in Councils of the Church +Cumulative misery of the city +Degenerating asceticism, drawn from pagan sources +Making believe that it actually contains happiness +Mysteries of Isis developed into Christian sacraments +Pious frauds of tampering monks +She had been saving herself--for what? + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE OF THE CUP, V4, BY CHURCHILL *** + +************ This file should be named wc22w10.txt or wc22w10.zip ************ + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, wc22w11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, wc22w10a.txt + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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