"What do you mean by nonsense?" Hodder asked. He did not make the question abrupt, and there was even the hint of a smile in his eyes, which Mr. Plimpton found the more disquieting.
"Why, that"s only a form of speech. I mean you"ll be practical, efficient, that you"ll get hold of the people of that neighbourhood and make "em see that the world isn"t such a bad place after all, make "em realize that we in St. John"s want to help "em out. That you won"t make them more foolishly discontented than they are, and go preaching socialism to them."
"I have no intention of preaching socialism," said Hodder. But he laid a slight emphasis on the word which sent a cold shiver down Mr. Plimpton"s spine, and made him wonder whether there might not be something worse than socialism.
"I knew you wouldn"t," he declared, with all the heartiness he could throw into his voice. "I repeat, you"re a practical, sensible man.
I"ll yield to none in my belief in the Church as a moral, uplifting, necessary spiritual force in our civilization, in my recognition of her high ideals, but we business men, Mr. Hodder,--as--I am sure you must agree,--have got to live, I am sorry to say, on a lower plane. We"ve got to deal with the world as we find it, and do our little best to help things along. We can"t take the Gospel literally, or we should all be ruined in a day, and swamp everybody else. You understand me?
"I understand you," said the rector.
Mr. Plimpton"s cigar had gone out. In spite of himself, he had slipped from the easy-going, casual tone into one that was becoming persuasive, apologetic, strenuous. Although the day was not particularly warm, he began to perspire a little; and he repeated the words over to himself, "I understand you." What the deuce did the rector know? He had somehow the air of knowing everything--more than Mr. Plimpton did. And Mr.
Plimpton was beginning to have the unusual and most disagreeable feeling of having been weighed in the balance and found wanting. He glanced at his guest, who sat quite still, the head bent a trifle, the disturbing gray eyes fixed contemplatively an him--accusingly. And yet the accusation did not seem personal with the clergyman, whose eyes were nearly the medium, the channels of a greater, an impersonal Ice. It was true that the man had changed. He was wholly baffling to Mr. Plimpton, whose sense of alarm increased momentarily into an almost panicky feeling as he remembered what Langmaid had said. Was this inscrutable rector of St. John"s gazing, knowingly, at the half owner of Harrods Hotel in Dalton Street, who couldn"t take the Gospel literally?
There was evidently no way to find out at once, and suspense would be unbearable, in vain he told himself that these thoughts were nonsense, the discomfort persisted, and he had visions of that career in which he had become one of the first citizens and the respected husband of Charlotte Gore clashing down about his ears. Why? Because a clergyman should choose to be quixotic, fanatical? He did not took quixotic, fanatical, Mr. Plimpton had to admit,--but a good deal saner than he, Mr. Plimpton, must have appeared at that moment. His throat was dry, and he didn"t dare to make the attempt to relight his cigar.
"There"s nothing like getting together--keeping in touch with people, Mr. Hodder," he managed to say. "I"ve been out of town a good deal this summer--putting on a little flesh, I"m sorry to admit. But I"ve been meaning to drop into the parish house and talk over those revised plans with you. I will drop in--in a day or two. I"m interested in the work, intensely interested, and so is Mrs. Plimpton. She"ll help you. I"m sorry you can"t lunch with me."
He had the air, now, of the man who finds himself disagreeably and unexpectedly closeted with a lunatic; and his language, although he sought to control it, became even a trifle less coherent.
"You must make allowances for us business men, Mr. Hodder. I mean, of course, we"re sometimes a little lax in our duties--in the summer, that is. Don"t shoot the pianist, he"s doing his--ahem! You know the story.
"By the way, I hear great things of you; I"m told it"s on the cards that you"re to be made a bishop."
"Oh," answered the rector, "there are better men mentioned than I!"
"I want you to know this," said his vestryman, as he seized Hodder"s hand, "much as we value you here, bitterly as we should hate to lose you, none of us, I am sure, would stand in the way of such a deserved advancement."
"Thank you, Mr. Plimpton," said the rector.
Mr. Plimpton watched the vigorous form striding through the great chamber until it disappeared. Then he seized his hat and made his way as rapidly as possible through the crowds to the Parr Building. At the entrance of the open-air roof garden of the Eyrie he ran into Nelson Langmaid.
"You"re the very man I"m after," said Mr. Plimpton, breathlessly. "I stopped in your office, and they said you"d gone up."
"What"s the matter, Wallis?" inquired the lawyer, tranquilly. "You look as if you"d lost a couple of bonds."
"I"ve just seen Hodder, and he is going to do it."
"Do what?"
"Sit down here, at this table in the corner, and I"ll tell you."
For a practical man, it must be admitted that Mr. Plimpton had very little of the concrete to relate. And it appeared on cross-examination by Mr. Langmaid, who ate his cold meat and salad with an exasperating and undiminished appet.i.te--that the only definite thing the rector had said was that he didn"t intend to preach socialism. This was rea.s.suring.
"Rea.s.suring!" exclaimed Mr. Plimpton, whose customary noonday hunger was lacking, "I wish you could have heard him say it!"
"The wicked," remarked the lawyer, "flee when no man pursueth. Don"t shoot the pianist!" Langmaid set down his beer, and threw back his head and laughed. "If I were the Reverend Mr. Hodder, after such an exhibition as you gave, I should immediately have suspected the pianist of something, and I should have gone off by myself and racked my brains and tried to discover what it was. He"s a clever man, and if he hasn"t got a list of Dalton Street property now he"ll have one by to-morrow, and the story of some of your transactions with Tom Beatty and the City Council."
"I believe you"d joke in the electric chair," said Mr. a Plimpton, resentfully. "I"ll tell you this,--and my experience backs me up,--if you can"t get next to a man by a little plain talk, he isn"t safe. I haven"t got the market sense for nothing, and I"ll give you this tip, Nelson,--it"s time to stand from under. Didn"t I warn you fellows that Bedloe Hubbell meant business long before he started in? and this parson can give Hubbell cards and spades. Hodder can"t see this thing as it is. He"s been thinking, this summer. And a man of that kind is downright dangerous when he begins to think. He"s found out things, and he"s put two and two together, and he"s the uncompromising type. He has a notion that the Gospel can be taken literally, and I could feel all the time I was talking to him he thought I was a crook."
"Perhaps he was right," observed the lawyer.
"That comes well from you," Mr. Plimpton retorted.
"Oh, I"m a crook, too," said Langmaid. "I discovered it some time ago.
The difference between you and me, Wallis, is that I am willing to acknowledge it, and you"re not. The whole business world, as we know it, is crooked, and if we don"t cut other people"s throats, they"ll cut ours."
"And if we let go, what would happen to the country?" his companion demanded.
Langmaid began to shake with silent laughter.
"Your solicitude about the country, Wallis, is touching. I was brought up to believe that patriotism had an element of sacrifice in it, but I can"t see ours. And I can"t imagine myself, somehow, as a Hercules bearing the burden of our Const.i.tution. From Mr. Hodder"s point of view, perhaps,--and I"m not sure it isn"t the right one, the pianist is doing his d.a.m.nedest, to the tune of--Dalton Street. We might as well look this thing in the face, my friend. You and I really don"t believe in another world, or we shouldn"t be taking so much trouble to make this one as we"d like to have it."
"I never expected to hear you talk this way," said Mr. Plimpton.
"Well, it"s somewhat of a surprise to me," the lawyer admitted.
"And I don"t think you put it fairly," his friend contended. "I never can tell when you are serious, but this is d.a.m.ned serious. In business we have to deal with crooks, who hold us up right and left, and if we stood back you know as well as I do that everything would go to pot. And if we let the reformers have their way the country would be bedlam. We"d have anarchy and bloodshed, revolution, and the people would be calling us, the strong men, back in no time. You can"t change human nature.
And we have a sense of responsibility--we support law and order and the Church, and found inst.i.tutions, and give millions away in charity."
The big lawyer listened to this somewhat fervent defence of his order with an amused smile, nodding his head slightly from side to side.
"If you don"t believe in it," demanded Mr. Plimpton, "why the deuce don"t you drop it?"
"It"s because of my loyalty," said Langmaid. "I wouldn"t desert my pals.
I couldn"t bear, Wallis, to see you go to the guillotine without me."
Mr. Plimpton became unpleasantly silent.
"Well, you may think it"s a joke," he resumed, after a moment, "but there will be a guillotine if we don"t look out. That confounded parson is getting ready to spring something, and I"m going to give Mr. Parr a tip. He"ll know how to handle him. He doesn"t talk much, but I"ve got an idea, from one or two things he let drop, that he"s a little suspicious of a change in Hodder. But he ought to be waived."
"You"re in no condition to talk to Mr. Parr, or to anyone else, except your wife, Walks," Langmaid said. "You"d better go home, and let me see Mr. Parr. I"m responsible for Mr. Hodder, anyway."
"All right," Mr. Plimpton agreed, as though he had gained some shred of comfort from this thought. "I guess you"re in worse than any of us."
Volume 6.
CHAPTER XX. THE ARRAIGNMENT
I
Looking backward, Hodder perceived that he had really come to the momentous decision of remaining at St. John"s in the twilight of an evening when, on returning home from seeing Kate Marcy at Mr. Bentley"s he had entered the darkening church. It was then that his mission had appeared to him as a vision. Every day, afterward, his sense and knowledge of this mission had grown stronger.