"It"s because you are bigger than I, although he has quarrelled with you so bitterly. I don"t know what definite wrongs he has done to other persons. I don"t wish to know. I don"t ask you to tell me what pa.s.sed between you that night. Once you said that you had an affection for him--that he was lonely. He is lonely. In these last weeks, in spite of his anger, I can see that he suffers terribly. It is a tragedy, because he will never give in."
"It is a tragedy." Hodder"s tone was agitated.
"I wonder if he realizes a little" she began, and paused. "Now that Preston has come home--"
"Your brother?" Hodder exclaimed.
"Yes. I forgot to tell you. I don"t know why he came," she faltered.
"I suppose he has got into some new trouble. He seems changed. I can"t describe it now, but I will tell you about it.... It"s the first time we"ve all three been together since my mother died, for Preston wasn"t back from college when I went to Paris to study...."
They stood together on the pavement before the ma.s.sive house, fraught with so many and varied a.s.sociations for Hodder. And as he looked up at it, his eye involuntarily rested upon the windows of the boy"s room where Eldon Parr had made his confession. Alison startled him by p.r.o.nouncing his name, which came with such unaccustomed sweetness from her lips. "You will write me to-morrow," she said, "after you have seen the bishop?"
"Yes, at once. You mustn"t let it worry you."
"I feel as if I had cast off that kind of worry forever. It is only--the other worries from which we do not escape, from which we do not wish to escape."
With a wonderful smile she had dropped his hands and gone in at the entrance, when a sound made them turn, the humming of a motor. And even as they looked it swung into Park Street.
"It"s a taxicab!" she said. As she spoke it drew up almost beside them, instead of turning in at the driveway, the door opened, and a man alighted.
"Preston!" Alison exclaimed.
He started, turning from the driver, whom he was about to pay. As for Hodder, he was not only undergoing a certain shock through the sudden contact, at such a moment, with Alison"s brother: there was an additional shock that this was Alison"s brother and Eldon Parr"s son.
Not that his appearance was shocking, although the well-clad, athletic figure was growing a trifle heavy, and the light from the side lamps of the car revealed dissipation in a still handsome face. The effect was a subtler one, not to be a.n.a.lyzed, and due to a mult.i.tude of preconceptions.
Alison came forward.
"This is Mr. Hodder, Preston," she said simply.
For a moment Preston continued to stare at the rector without speaking.
Suddenly he put out his hand.
"Mr. Hodder, of St. John"s?" he demanded.
"Yes," answered Hodder. His surprise deepened to perplexity at the warmth of the handclasp that followed.
A smile that brought back vividly to Hodder the sunny expression of the schoolboy in the picture lightened the features of the man.
"I"m very glad to see you," he said, in a tone that left no doubt of its genuine quality.
"Thank you," Hodder replied, meeting his eye with kindness, yet with a scrutiny that sought to penetrate the secret of an unexpected cordiality. "I, too, have hoped to see you."
Alison, who stood by wondering, felt a meaning behind the rector"s words. She pressed his hand as he bade her, once more, good night.
"Won"t you take my taxicab?" asked Preston. "It is going down town anyway."
"I think I"d better stick to the street cars," Hodder said. His refusal was not ungraceful, but firm. Preston did not insist.
In spite of the events of that evening, which he went over again and again as the midnight car carried him eastward, in spite of a new-born happiness the actuality of which was still difficult to grasp, Hodder was vaguely troubled when he thought of Preston Parr.
Volume 8.
CHAPTER XXVII. RETRIBUTION
I
The Bishop"s House was a comfortable, double dwelling of a smooth, bright red brick and large, plate-gla.s.s windows, situated in a plot at the western end of Waverley Place. It had been bought by the Diocese in the nineties, and was representative of that transitional period in American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place. The house had pointed gables, and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only to darken the front door, made of heavy pieces of wood fantastically curved.
It was precisely ten o"clock in the morning when Hodder rang the bell and was shown into the ample study which he had entered on other and less vital occasions. He found difficulty in realizing that this pleasant room, lined with well-worn books and overlooking a back lawn where the clothes of the episcopal family hung in the yellow autumn sun, was to be his judgment seat, whence he might be committed to trial for heresy.
And this was the twentieth century! The full force of the preposterous fact smote him, and a consciousness of the distance he himself had travelled since the comparatively recent days of his own orthodoxy. And suddenly he was full again of a resentful impatience, not only that he should be called away from his labours, his cares, the strangers who were craving his help, to answer charges of such an absurd triviality, but that the performance of the great task to which he had set his hand, with G.o.d"s help, should depend upon it. Would his enemies be permitted to drive him out thus easily?
The old bishop came in, walking by the aid of a cane. He smiled at Hodder, who greeted him respectfully, and bidding him sit down, took a chair himself behind his writing table, from whence he gazed awhile earnestly and contemplatively at the rugged features and strong shoulders of the rector of St. John"s. The effect of the look was that of a visual effort to harmonize the man with the deed he had done, the stir he had created in the city and the diocese; to readjust impressions.
A hint of humour crept into the bishop"s blue eyes, which were watery, yet strong, with heavy creases in the corners. He indicated by a little gesture three bundles of envelopes, bound by rubber bands, on the corner of his blotter.
"Hodder," he said, "see what a lot of trouble you have made for me in my old age! All those are about you."
The rector"s expression could not have been deemed stern, but it had met the bishop"s look unflinchingly. Now it relaxed into a responding smile, which was not without seriousness.
"I am sorry, sir," Hodder answered, "to have caused you any worry--or inconvenience."
"Perhaps," said the bishop, "I have had too much smooth sailing for a servant of Christ. Indeed, I have come to that conclusion."
Hodder did not reply. He was moved, even more by the bishop"s manner and voice than his words. And the opening to their conversation was unexpected. The old man put on his spectacles, and drew from the top of one of the bundles a letter.
"This is from one of your vestrymen, Mr. Gordon Atterbury," he said, and proceeded to read it, slowly. When he had finished he laid it down.
"Is that, according to your recollection, Mr. Hodder, a fairly accurate summary of the sermon you gave when you resumed the pulpit at the end of the summer?"
"Yes, sir," answered the rector, "it is surprisingly accurate, with the exception of two or three inferences which I shall explain at the proper moment."
"Mr. Atterbury is to be congratulated on his memory," the bishop observed a little dryly. "And he has saved me the trouble of reading more. Now what are the inferences to which you object?"
Hodder stated them. "The most serious one," he added, "is that which he draws from my att.i.tude on the virgin birth. Mr. Atterbury insists, like others who cling to that dogma, that I have become what he vaguely calls an Unitarian. He seems incapable of grasping my meaning, that the only true G.o.d the age knows, the world has ever known, is the G.o.d in Christ, is the Spirit in Christ, and is there not by any material proof, but because we recognize it spiritually. And that doctrine and dogma, ancient speculations as to how, definitely, that spirit came to be in Christ, are fruitless and mischievous to-day. Mr. Atterbury and others seem actually to resent my identification of our Lord"s Spirit with the social conscience as well as the individual conscience of our time."
The bishop nodded.
"Hodder," he demanded abruptly, leaning forward over his desk, "how did this thing happen?"
"You mean, sir--"