"Oh, Phil!"
"Hodder"s been pretty intimate with Eldon Parr--that always puzzled me,"
Phil went on. "And yet I"m like you, I never doubted Hodder"s honesty.
I"ve always been curious to know what would happen when he found out the kind of thing Eldon Parr is doing every day in his life, making people stand and deliver in the interest of what he would call National Prosperity. Why, that fellow, Funk, they sent to the penitentiary the other day for breaking into the Add.i.c.ks" house isn"t a circ.u.mstance to Eldon Parr. He"s robbed his tens of thousands, and goes on robbing them right along. By the way, Mr. Parr took most of Add.i.c.ks" money before Funk got his silver."
"Phil, you have such a ridiculous way of putting things! But I suppose it"s true."
"True! I should say it was! There was Mr. Bentley--that was mild. And there never was a hold-up of a western express that could compare to the Consolidated Tractions. Some of these big fellows have the same kind of brain as the professional thieves. Well, they are professional thieves--what"s the use of mincing matters! They never try the same game twice. Mr. Parr"s getting ready to make another big haul right now. I know, because Plimpton said as much, although he didn"t confide in me what this particular piece of rascality is. He knows better." Phil Goodrich looked grim.
"But the law?" exclaimed his wife.
"There never was a law that Nelson Langmaid couldn"t drive a horse and carriage through."
"And Mr. Langmaid"s one of the nicest men I know!"
"What I wonder," mused Phil, "is whether this is a mere doctrinal revolt on Hodder"s part, or whether he has found out a few things. There are so many parsons in these days who don"t seem to see any inconsistency in robbing several thousand people to build settlement houses and carved marble altars, and who wouldn"t accept a Christmas box from a highwayman. But I"ll do Hodder the justice to say he doesn"t strike me as that kind. And I have an idea that Eldon Parr and Wallis Plimpton and the rest know he isn"t, know that he"d be a Tartar if he ever get started, and that"s what makes them uneasy."
"Then it isn"t his change of religious opinions they would care about?"
said Eleanor.
"Oh, I don"t say that Eldon Parr won"t try to throw him out if he questions the faith as delivered by the Saints."
"Phil, what a way of putting it!"
"Any indication of independence, any approach to truth would be regarded as dangerous," Phil continued. "And of course Gordon Atterbury and others we could mention, who think they believe in the unchipped egg theory, will be outraged. But it"s deeper than that. Eldon Parr will give orders that Hodder"s to go."
"Give orders?"
"Certainly. That vestry, so far as Mr. Parr is concerned, is a mere dummy board of directors. He"s made Langmaid, and Plimpton, and even Everett Constable, who"s the son of an honourable gentleman, and ought to know better. And he can ruin them by snapping his fingers. He can even make the financial world too hot for Ferguson. I"ll say this for Gordon Atterbury, that Mr. Parr can"t control him, but he"s got a majority without him, and Gordon won"t vote for a heretic. Who are left, except father-in-law Waring and myself?"
"He can"t control either of you!" said Eleanor, proudly.
"When it comes to that, Nell--we"ll move into Canada and buy a farm."
"But can he hurt you, Phil--either of you?" she asked, after a moment.
"I"d like to see him try it," Phil Goodrich declared
And his wife thought, as she looked at him, that she would like to see Mr. Parr try it, too.
III
Phil Goodrich had once said that Mr. Plimpton"s translation of the national motto E pluribus unum, was "get together," and it was true that not the least of Mr. Plimpton"s many gifts was that of peace making.
Such was his genius that he scented trouble before it became manifest to the world, and he stoutly declared that no difference of opinion ever existed between reasonable men that might not be patched up before the breach became too wide--provided that a third reasonable man contributed his services. The qualifying word "reasonable" is to be noted. When Mr.
Bedloe Hubbell had undertaken, in the name of Reform, to make a witch"s cauldron of the city"s politics, which Mr. Beatty had hitherto conducted so smoothly from the back room of his saloon, Mr. Plimpton had unselfishly offered his services. Bedloe Hubbell, although he had been a playmate of Mr. Plimpton"s wife"s, had not proved "reasonable," and had rejected with a scorn only to be deemed fanatical the suggestion that Mr. Hubbell"s interests and Mr. Beatty"s interests need not clash, since Mr. Hubbell might go to Congress! And Mr. Plimpton was the more hurt since the happy suggestion was his own, and he had had no little difficulty in getting Mr. Beatty to agree to it.
Yet Mr. Plimpton"s career in the enn.o.bling role of peacemaker had, on the whole, been crowned with such success as to warrant his belief in the principle. Mr. Parr, for instance,--in whose service, as in that of any other friend, Mr. Plimpton was always ready to act--had had misunderstandings with eminent financiers, and sometimes with United States Senators. Mr. Plimpton had made many trips to the Capitol at Washington, sometimes in company with Mr. Langmaid, sometimes not, and on one memorable occasion had come away smiling from an interview with the occupant of the White House himself.
Lest Mr. Plimpton"s powers of premonition seem supernatural, it may be well to reveal the comparative simplicity of his methods. Genius, a.n.a.lyzed, is often disappointing, Mr. Plimpton"s was selective and synthetic. To ill.u.s.trate in a particular case, he had met Mr. Parr in New York and had learned that the Reverend Mr. Hodder had not only declined to accompany the banker on a yachting trip, but had elected to remain in the city all summer, in his rooms in the parish house, while conducting no services. Mr. Parr had thought this peculiar. On his return home Mr. Plimpton had one day dropped in to see a Mr. Gaines, the real estate agent for some of his property. And Mr. Plimpton being hale-fellow-well-met, Mr. Gaines had warned him jestingly that he would better not let his parson know that he owned a half interest in a certain hotel in Dalton Street, which was leased at a profitable rate.
If Mr. Plimpton felt any uneasiness, he did not betray it. And he managed to elicit from the agent, in an entirely casual and jovial manner, the fact that Mr. Hodder, a month or so before, had settled the rent of a woman for a Dalton Street flat, and had been curious to discover the name of the owner. Mr. Gaines, whose business it was to recognize everybody, was sure of Mr. Hodder, although he had not worn clerical clothes.
Mr. Plimpton became very thoughtful when he had left the office. He visited Nelson Langmaid in the Parr Building. And the result of the conference was to cause Mr. Langmaid to recall, with a twinge of uneasiness, a certain autumn morning in a room beside Bremerton Lake when he had been faintly yet distinctly conscious of the admonitory whisperings of that sixth sense which had saved him on other occasions.
"Dash it!" he said to himself, after Mr. Plimpton had departed, and he stood in the window and gazed across at the flag on the roof of "Ferguson"s." "It would serve me right for meddling in this parson business. Why did I take him away from Jerry Whitely, anyhow?"
It added to Nelson Langmaid"s discomfort that he had a genuine affection, even an admiration for the parson in question. He might have known by looking at the man that he would wake up some day,--such was the burden of his lament. And there came to him, ironically out of the past, the very words of Mr. Parr"s speech to the vestry after Dr.
Gilman"s death, that succinct list of qualifications for a new rector which he himself, Nelson Langmaid, had humorously and even more succinctly epitomized. Their "responsibility to the parish, to the city, and to G.o.d" had been to find a rector "neither too old nor too young, who would preach the faith as we received it, who was not sensational, and who did not mistake Socialism for Christianity." At the "Socialism"
a certain sickly feeling possessed the lawyer, and he wiped beads of perspiration from his dome-like forehead.
He didn"t pretend to be versed in theology--so he had declared--and at the memory of these words of his the epithet "a.s.s," self applied, pa.s.sed his lips. "You want a parson who will stick to his last, not too high or too low or too broad or too narrow, who has intellect without too much initiative... and will not get the church uncomfortably full of strangers and run you out of your pews." Thus he had capped the financier. Well, if they had caught a tartar, it served him, Nelson Langmaid, right. He recalled his talk with Gerald Whitely, and how his brother-in-law had lost his temper when they had got on the subject of personality....
Perhaps Wallis Plimpton could do something. Langmaid"s hopes of this were not high. It may have been that he had suspicions of what Mr.
Plimpton would have called Hodder"s "reasonableness." One thing was clear--that Mr. Plimpton was frightened. In the sanctuaries, the private confessionals of high finance (and Nelson Langmaid"s office may be called so), the more primitive emotions are sometimes exhibited.
"I don"t see what business it is of a clergyman, or of any one else, whether I own property in Dalton Street," Mr. Plimpton had said, as he sat on the edge of the lawyer"s polished mahogany desk. "What does he expect us to do,--allow our real estate to remain unproductive merely for sentimental reasons? That"s like a parson, most of "em haven"t got any more common sense than that. What right has he got to go nosing around Dalton Street? Why doesn"t he stick to his church?"
"I thought you fellows were to build him a settlement house there,"
Langmaid observed.
"On the condition that he wouldn"t turn socialist."
"You"d better have stipulated it in the bond," said the lawyer, who could not refrain, even at this solemn moment, from the temptation of playing upon Mr. Plimpton"s apprehensions. "I"m afraid he"ll make it his business, Wallis, to find out whether you own anything in Dalton Street.
I"ll bet he"s got a list of Dalton Street property in his pocket right now."
Mr. Plimpton groaned.
"Thank G.o.d I don"t own any of it!" said Langmaid.
"What the deuce does he intend to do?" the other demanded.
"Read it out in church," Langmaid suggested. "It wouldn"t sound pretty, Wallis, to be advertised in the post on Monday morning as owning that kind of a hotel."
"Oh, he"s a gentleman," said Mr. Plimpton, "he wouldn"t do anything as low as that!"
"But if he"s become a socialist?" objected Langmaid.
"He wouldn"t do it," his friend reiterated, none too confidently. "I shouldn"t be surprised if he made me resign from the vestry and forced me to sell my interest. It nets me five thousand a year."
"What is the place?" Langmaid asked sympathetically, "Harrod"s?"
Mr. Plimpton nodded.
"Not that I am a patron," the lawyer explained somewhat hastily. "But I"ve seen the building, going home."
"It looks to me as if it would burn down some day, Wallis."