"And then, perhaps, we may have another talk," he added, looking down at her. "Give my regards to your husband."
Yet, as he stood in the window looking after her retreating figure, there gradually grew upon him a vague and uncomfortable feeling that he had not been satisfactory, and this was curiously coupled with the realization that the visit had added a considerable increment to his already p.r.o.nounced liking for Eleanor Goodrich. She was, paradoxically, his kind of a person--such was the form the puzzle took. And so ably had she presented her difficulties that, at one point of the discussion, it had ironically occurred to him to refer her to Gordon Atterbury. Mr.
Atterbury"s faith was like an egg, and he took precious care not to have it broken or chipped.
Hodder found himself smiling. It was perhaps inevitable that he began at once to contrast Mrs. Goodrich with other feminine parishioners who had sought him out, and who had surrendered unconditionally. They had evinced an equally disturbing tendency,--a willingness to be overborne.
For had he not, indeed, overborne them? He could not help suspecting these other ladies of a craving for the luxury of the confessional. One thing was certain,--he had much less respect for them than for Eleanor Goodrich....
That afternoon he sent her the list of books. But the weeks pa.s.sed, and she did not come back. Once, when he met her at a dinner of Mrs.
Preston"s, both avoided the subject of her visit, both were conscious of a constraint. She did not know how often, unseen by her, his eyes had sought her out from the chancel. For she continued to come to church as frequently as before, and often brought her husband.
II
One bright and boisterous afternoon in March, Hodder alighted from an electric car amid a swirl of dust and stood gazing for a moment at the stone gate-houses of that "rus in urbe", Waverley Place, and at the gold block-letters written thereon, "No Thoroughfare." Against those gates and their contiguous grill the rude onward rush of the city had beaten in vain, and, baffled, had swept around their serene enclosure, westward.
Within, a silvery sunlight lit up the gra.s.s of the island running down the middle, and in the beds the softening earth had already been broken by the crocus sheaves. The bare branches of the trees swayed in the gusts. As Hodder penetrated this hallowed precinct he recognized, on either hand, the residences of several of his parishioners, each in its ample allotted s.p.a.ce: Mrs. Larrabbee"s; the Laureston Greys"; Thurston Gore"s, of which Mr. Wallis Plimpton was now the master,--Mr. Plimpton, before whose pertinacity the walls of Jericho had fallen; and finally the queer, twisted Richardson mansion of the Everett Constables, whither he was bound, with its recessed doorway and tiny windows peeping out from under mediaeval penthouses.
He was ushered into a library where the shades were already drawn, where a-white-clothed tea-table was set before the fire, the red rays dancing on the silver tea-kettle. On the centre-table he was always sure to find, neatly set in a rack, the books about which the world was talking, or rather would soon begin to talk; and beside them were ranged magazines; French, English, and American, Punch, the Spectator, the Nation, the "Revue des deux Mondes". Like the able general she was, Mrs.
Constable kept her communications open, and her acquaintance was by no means confined to the city of her nativity. And if a celebrity were pa.s.sing through, it were pretty safe, if in doubt, to address him in her care.
Hodder liked and admired her, but somehow she gave him the impression of having attained her ascendancy at a price, an ascendancy which had apparently been gained by impressing upon her environment a new note--literary, aesthetic, cosmopolitan. She held herself, and those she carried with her, abreast of the times, and he was at a loss to see how so congenial an effort could have left despite her sweetness--the little mark of hardness he discerned, of worldliness. For she was as well born as any woman in the city, and her husband was a Constable. He had inherited, so the rector had been informed, one of those modest fortunes that were deemed affluence in the eighties. His keeping abreast of the times was the enigma, and Hodder had often wondered how financial genius had contrived to house itself in the well-dressed, gently pompous little man whose lack of force seemed at times so painfully evident. And yet he was rated one of the rich men of the city, and his name Hodder had read on many boards with Mr. Parr"s!
A person more versed in the modern world of affairs than the late rector of Bremerton would not have been so long in arriving at the answer to this riddle. Hodder was astute, he saw into people more than they suspected, but he was not sophisticated.
He stood picturing, now, the woman in answer to whose summons he had come. With her finely chiselled features, her abundant white hair, her slim figure and erect carriage she reminded him always of a Vigee Lebrun portrait. He turned at the sound of her voice behind him.
"How good of you to come, Mr. Hodder, when you were so busy," she said, taking his hand as she seated herself behind the tea-kettle. "I wanted the chance to talk to you, and it seemed the best way. What is that you have, Soter"s book?"
"I pinked it up on the table," he explained.
"Then you haven"t read it? You ought to. As a clergyman, it would interest you. Religion treated from the economic side, you know, the effect of lack of nutrition on character. Very unorthodox, of course."
"I find that I have very little time to read," he said. "I sometimes take a book along in the cars."
"Your profession is not so leisurely as it once was, I often think it such a pity. But you, too, are paying the penalty of complexity." She smiled at him sympathetically. "How is Mr. Parr? I haven"t seen him for several weeks."
"He seemed well when I saw him last," replied Hodder.
"He"s a wonderful man; the amount of work he accomplishes without apparent effort is stupendous." Mrs. Constable cast what seemed a tentative glance at the powerful head, and handed him his tea. "I wanted to talk to you about Gertrude," she said.
He looked unenlightened.
"About my daughter, Mrs. Warren. She lives in New York, you know--on Long Island."
Then he had remembered something he had heard.
"Yes," he said.
"She met you, at the Fergusons", just for a moment, when she was out here last autumn. What really nice and simple people the Fergusons are, with all their money!"
"Very nice indeed," he agreed, puzzled.
"I have been sorry for them in the past," she went on evenly. "They had rather a hard time--perhaps you may have heard. n.o.body appreciated them.
They were entombed, so to speak, in a hideous big house over on the South Side, which fortunately burned down, and then they bought in Park Street, and took a pew in St. John"s. I suppose the idea of that huge department store was rather difficult to get used to. But I made up my mind it was nonsense to draw the line at department stores, especially since Mr. Ferguson"s was such a useful and remarkable one, so I went across and called. Mrs. Ferguson was so grateful, it was almost pathetic. And she"s a very good friend--she came here everyday when Genevieve had appendicitis."
"She"s a good woman," the rector said.
"And Nan,--I adore Nan, everybody adores Nan. She reminds me of one of those exquisite, blue-eyed dolls her father imports. Now if I were a bachelor, Mr. Hodder--!" Mrs. Constable left the rest to his imagination.
He smiled.
"I"m afraid Miss Ferguson has her own ideas." Running through Hodder"s mind, a troubled current, were certain memories connected with Mrs.
Warren. Was she the divorced daughter, or was she not?
"But I was going to speak to you about Gertrude. She"s had such a hard time, poor dear, my heart has bled for her." There was a barely perceptible tremor in Mrs. Constable"s voice. "All that publicity, and the inevitable suffering connected with it! And no one can know the misery she went through, she is so sensitive. But now, at last, she has a chance for happiness--the real thing has come."
"The real thing!" he echoed.
"Yes. She"s going to marry a splendid man, Eldridge Sumner. I know the family well. They have always stood for public spirit, and this Mr.
Summer, although he is little over thirty, was chairman of that Vice Commission which made such a stir in New York a year ago. He"s a lawyer, with a fine future, and they"re madly in love. And Gertrude realizes now, after her experience, the true values in life. She was only a child when she married Victor Warren."
"But Mr. Warren," Hodder managed to say, "is still living."
"I sometimes wonder, Mr. Hodder," she went on hurriedly, "whether we can realize how different the world is today from what it was twenty years ago, until something of this kind is actually brought home to us. I shall never forget how distressed, how overwhelmed Mr. Constable and I were when Gertrude got her divorce. I know that they are regarding such things differently in the East, but out here!--We never dreamed that such a thing could happen to us, and we regarded it as a disgrace.
But gradually--" she hesitated, and looked at the motionless clergyman--"gradually I began to see Gertrude"s point of view, to understand that she had made a mistake, that she had been too young to comprehend what she was doing. Victor Warren had been ruined by money, he wasn"t faithful to her, but an extraordinary thing has happened in his case. He"s married again, and Gertrude tells me he"s absurdly happy, and has two children."
As he listened, Hodder"s dominating feeling was amazement that such a course as her daughter had taken should be condoned by this middle-aged lady, a prominent member of his congregation and the wife of a vestryman, who had been nurtured and steeped in Christianity. And not only that: Mrs. Constable was plainly defending a further step, which in his opinion involved a breach of the Seventh Commandment! To have invaded these precincts, the muddy, turbulent river of individualism had risen higher than he would have thought possible....
"Wait!" she implored, checking his speech,--she had been watching him with what was plainly anxiety, "don"t say anything yet. I have a letter here which she wrote me--at the time. I kept it. Let me read a part of it to you, that you may understand more fully the tragedy of it."
Mrs. Constable thrust her hand into her lap and drew forth a thickly covered sheet.
"It was written just after she left him--it is an answer to my protest,"
she explained, and began to read:
"I know I promised to love Victor, mother, but how can one promise to do a thing over which one has no control? I loved him after he stopped loving me. He wasn"t a bit suited to me--I see that now--he was attracted by the outside of me, and I never knew what he was like until I married him. His character seemed to change completely; he grew morose and quick-tempered and secretive, and nothing I did pleased him. We led a cat-and-dog life. I never let you know--and yet I see now we might have got along in any other relationship. We were very friendly when we parted, and I"m not a bit jealous because he cares for another woman who I can see is much better suited to him.
""I can"t honestly regret leaving him, and I"m not conscious of having done anything wrong. I don"t want to shock you, and I know how terribly you and father must feel, but I can see now, somehow, that I had to go through this experience, terrible as it was, to find myself. If it were thirty years ago, before people began to be liberal in such matters, I shudder to think what might have become of me. I should now be one of those terrible women between fifty and sixty who have tried one frivolity and excess after another--but I"m not coming to that! And my friends have really been awfully kind, and supported me--even Victor"s family. Don"t, don"t think that I"m not respectable! I know how you look at such things."" Mrs. Constable closed the letter abruptly.
"I did look at such things in that way," she added, "but I"ve changed.
That letter helped to change me, and the fact that it was Gertrude who had been through this. If you only knew Gertrude, Mr. Hodder, you couldn"t possibly think of her as anything but sweet and pure."
Although the extent of Hodder"s acquaintance with Mrs. Warren had been but five minutes, the letter had surprisingly retouched to something like brilliancy her faded portrait, the glow in her cheeks, the iris blue in her eyes. He recalled the little shock he had experienced when told that she was divorced, for her appeal had lain in her very freshness, her frank and confiding manner. She was one of those women who seem to say, "Here I am, you can"t but like me:" And he had responded--he remembered that--he had liked her. And now her letter, despite his resistance, had made its appeal, so genuinely human was it, so honest, although it expressed a philosophy he abhorred.
Mrs. Constable was watching him mutely, striving to read in his grave eyes the effect of her pleadings.
"You are telling me this, Mrs. Constable--why?" he asked.