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£nt gazing out at a formal garden at the
ack of the house. The stalks of late flow
irsxlay withering, but here and there the
eaves were still vivid, and clusters of crim
ion berries gleamed in the autumn sunshine
t pergola ran down the middle, and through
lenuded grapevines he caught a glimpse, at
lie far end, of sculptured figures and curv
ng marble benches surrounding a pool.
"What a wonderful spot!” he exclaimed.
‘ My daughter Alison designed it.”
"She must have great talent,” said the
■ector.
"She’s gone to New York and become a
andscape architect,” said his host with a
lerceptible dryness. “Women in these days
ire apt to be everything except what the
,ord intended them to be.”
They went down stairs, and Hodder took
lis leave, although he felt an odd reluctance
o go. Mr. Parr rang the bell
'J'll send you down in the motor,” he said.
“I’d like the exercise of walking." said the
ector. "I begin to miss it already, in the
:ity.”
' You look as if you had taken a great
leal of it,” Mr. Parr declared, following him
o the door. “I hope you'll drop in often.
Sven if I’m not here, the gallery and the
ibrary are at your disposal.”
Their eyes met.
"You’re very good,” Hodder replied, and
cent down the steps and through the open
oorway.
At, length, after he had been wa’king for
early an hour, he halted and looked about
im. ’ He was within a few blocks of the
hurch, a little to one side of Tower Street,--
le main east and west highway of the ci v.
i the midst of that district in which Mr.
yrr had made the remark that poverty
as inevitable. Slovenly and depressing a.
ootjday, it. seemed now frankly to have
ting off its mask. Dusk was gathering,
nd with it a smoke-stained fog that lent a
icklydinge to the lights. Women slunk by
im; the saloons, apparently closed, and
iany houses with veiled windows betrayed
»cret and sinister gleams. In the midst of
block rose a tall, pretentious though
'icaply constructed building with the words
I’ctel Albert.” in flaming electric letters
beye an archway. Once his eye read “Dal
?:i Street” on a lamp.
I Mi dor :esurned his walk more slowly,
rd in a few minutes reached his rooms in
ie parish house.
■;r.c Riddles of the Twentieth Century.
a LTHOUGH he found the oom
plications of a modern city
/ parish somewhat bewilder
ing. the new rector entered
jTk. into his duties that Winter
with apostolic zeal. He was
aware of limitations and
anomalies, but his faith was
|?;itfdless. his energy the subject of good
-fgred comment by his vestry and. parish
es er?, whose pressing invitations to din
io ts he was often compelled to refuse
fhpye wa: in John Hodder something in
stfttable that inflamed curiosity and 'eft
t unsatisfied.
lit was only natural that he should have
L moods of depression. But the recurrent
pw of his energy swept them away. Cynic
k- had no place in his militant Chrin
hnity, and yet there were times when he
I 'noered »>i.ether these good people really
fished achievements from their rector,
they had the air of saying "Bravo!” and
pen of turning away. And he did nor con
ieal from himself that he was really doing
othiag but labor. The distances were
treat; and between his dinner parties,
[lasses, services and visits, he was forced
Ip’ sit far into the night preparing his ser
[ions, when his brain was not so keen as
I might have been.
Indeed—and this thought was cynical and
[in of character —he asked himself on one
kcasion whether his principal achievement
[o far had not consisted in getting on tin
isual terms with Elder Parr. They were
lot lacking who thought so, and who did not
lesitate to imply it. They evidently re
arded his growing intimacy with the bank
r yith approval, as in some sort a supreme
uoilfication for a rector of St. John’s, and
proof of unusual abilities There could
ie no question, for instance, that he had
dvanced perceptibly in the estimation of
as wife of another of his vestrymen, Mrs.
Vallis Plimpton.
I "I. think it quite wonderful.” she re
harked, on the occasion at which he was
he guest of honor in what was still called
he tiew Gore mansion, “that you have come
p know Mr. Parr so well in such a short
lime. How did you do it, Mr. Hodder?
bl course Wallis knows him. and sees a
Leat deal of him in business matters. He
Jias on Wallis. But they tell me you han
rown more intimate with him than any
tie has been since Alison left him.”
I’odder himself was at a loss io account
or ’ the relationship. It troubled him
agiiely, for Mr. Parr was the aggressor;
ml often at dusk, when Hodder was work
bg under his study lamp, the telephone
I'ould ring, and on taking • own the re
■yer he would hear the banker's voice
Tjn alone to-nigh r , Mr. Hodder. Wil 1
on 'come and have dinner with me?”
WING partly to the old-fash
f !on<?d ideas of Dr. Gilman,
S and partly to the conserva
v W tism of its vestry, the in
stitutionalism of St. John’s
was by no means up to
date. No settlement house,
with day nurseries, was
biintained In the slums The parish house,
r.itt in the early nineties, had its gymnasi-
um hall and class and reading rooms, but
was not what in these rapidly moving
times would be called modern. Presiding
over its activities, and seconded by a pile,
but earnest young man recently ordained,
was Hodder’s first assistant, the Reverend
Mr. McCrae.
The results accomplished seemed strange
ly disproportionate to the efforts—for they,
labored abundantly. The Italian mothers
appear”- stolidly appreciative of the altru
ism of Miss Ramsay, who taught the kinder
garten. ia taking their charges off their
hands for three hours of a morning, and
the same might be said of the Jews and
Germans and Russians The newsboys en
joyed the gymnasium and reading rooms:
some of them were drafted into the choir,
yet the singing of Te Deums failed some
how to accomplish the miracle of regenera
tion. The boys, as a rule, were happier,
no doubt: the new environments not
wholly without results. But the rector
was an idealist.
He strove hard to become their friend,
and that of the men; to win their confi
dence. and with a considerable measure of
success. On more than one occasion he
threw aside his clerical coat and put on
boxing gloves and he gave a series of lec
tures. with lantern slides collected during
the six months he had once spent in Eu
rope. Tile Irish-Americano and the Ger
mans were the readiest to respond, and
these were for the most part young working
men and youths by no means destitute.
They liked and trusted him —on a tacit
condition. There was a boundary he
might' not cross.
One night as he stood with his assistant
in the hall after the men had gone, Hodder
could contain himself no longer.
“Look- here, McCrae,” he broke out,
“these nmn never come to enurch —or only
a very few of them.”
"No more they do," McCrae agreed.
"We’re not. making Christians of them."
said Hodder, beginning to walk up and
down. Why is it?”
“Try to teach them religion." said Mc-
Crae —he almost pronounced it releeglon
—"and see what happens. Ye'll have no
classes at all. They only come, the best
of them, because ye let. them alone that
way, and they get a little decency and so
ciety help. It's somewhat to keep them
out of the dance halls and saloons, maybe.'
“What's the use of reaching them, only
to touch them'’ in addition to being helpeo
materially and social T-. and kept away from
the dance halls and saloons, they ought to
be fired by the Gospel, to be remade. They
should be going out into the highways and
byways to bring others into the church." .
The Scotchman’s face changed a little
For an instant his eyes lighted up. whether
in sympathy or commiseration or both.
Hodder could not tell.
“I'm with ye. Mr. Hodder, if ye'll show
me the way But oughtn’t we to begin at
both ends?"
“At both ends?" Hodder repeated
"Surely. With the people in the pews?
Oughtn't we to be firing them, too?”
“Yes," said the rector. “You’re right.”
He turned away, to feel McCrae’s hand
on his sleeve.
“Maybe it will come, Mr Hodder.” he
said. "There's no telling when the light
will strike in.”
It was the nearest to optimism he had
ever known his assistant to approach.
"McCrae." he asked, "have you ever tried
to do anything with Dalton Street?"
"Dalton Street?”
"Yes," Hodder forced himself to go on.
and it came to him that he had repeated
virtually the same words to Mr. Parr, "it
is at our very doors, a continual reproach.
There is real poverty in those rooming
houses, and I have never seen vice so de
slant and shameless.” •
“It’s a shifty place, that.” McCrae re
plied. “They’re in it one day and gone the
next, a son of catch-basin for all the rub
bish of the city. I can recall when decent
people lived there, and now it's all ligh;
housekeeping and dives and what not."
"But that doesn't relieve us of response
bility,” Hodder observed.
“I'm not denying it. I think, ye'll find
here’s very little to get hold of.”
SV ND A Y after Sunday Hodder
looked upon the same picture,
the Winter light filtering through
emblazoned window's, falling
athwart stone pillars, and stain
ins with rich colors the marble
of the centre aisle. The organ
rolled out hymns and anthems,
the voices of the whit.e-rnbed choir echoed
among the arches. And Hodder’s eye.
sweeping over the decorous congregation,
grew *o recognize certain landmarks: Eldon
Parr, rigid at one end of his empty pew;
little Everett Constable, comfortably, but
always pompously settled at one end of bi?,
his white-haired and distinguished-looking
wife at the other.
He invariably turned from his contem
plation of Gordon Atterbury to the double
Waring pew. which went from aisle to aisle,
in his heart, he have preferred the
approval of Eleanor Goodrich and her hus
band, who came on alternate Sundays, and
of Asa Waring Instinct spoke to him hete;
he seemed lo read in their faces that he
failed to strike in them responsive chords.
He was drawn io them: the conviction grew
upon him that he did not reach them, and
it troubled him, as he thought, dispropor
tionately
The rector’s office in the parish house
was a businesslike room on the first floor,
fitted up with a desk, a table, straight
backed chairs, and a revolving bookcase
And te it, one windy morning in March,
came Eleanor Goodrich. Hodder rose to
greet her with an eagerness which, from
his kindly yet penetrating glance, she did
not suspect.
“I wanted to ask you one or two things,"
she began, not very steadily “As perhaps
you may know. J was brought up in this
church, baptized and confirmed in it. I’ve
come to fear that, when I was confirmed,
I wasn’t old enough to know what I was
doing.”
She took a deep breath, amazed at her
boldness, for this wasn't in the least how
she had meant to begin. And she gazed it
the rector anxiously. To her surprise, he
did not appear to be inordinately shocked
"Do you know any better now?" he
asked
“Perhaps not,” she admitted. “But the
things of which I was sure at that time I
am not sure of now. My faith is—is not as
complete.”
‘ Faith may be likened to an egg, Mrs.
Goodrich,” ne said. "It must be kept whole-
If the shell is chipped, it is spoiled."
Eleanor plucked up her courage. Eggs,
she declared, had been used as illustrations
by conservatives before now.
Hodder relieved her by smiling in ready
appt relation.
“Columbus had reference to this world,'
he said ' I was thinking of a mors perfect
one.” v
"Oh!” sbe cried, “I dare say there is a
more perfect one. I should hate to think
there wasn't—but I can't imagine it
There’s nothing in the Bible in the wav of
description of it to make me really wish to
go there. The New Jerusalem is too in
sipid, too material. I m sure I'm shocking
you, but I ve got to be honest, to sav wnar
I feel"
"If others would be as honest." said the
rector, “the problems of clergymen would
be much easier. And it is precisely be
cause people will not tell us what they
feel tnat we are left in the dark and cati
not help them. Os course, the language of
St. John about the future is figurative.”
"Then I wish it hadn’t been made so ex
plicit. Its very definiteness is somehow—
stultifying. And Mr. Hodder, if we were
not meant to know its details, it. seems to
me that if the hereafter is to have any real
value and influence over our lives here, we
xh'iulri know something of its eonditloii
because it must be in some sense a continu
ation of this. I'm not sure that I make
mysqlf clear."
Admirably clear. But we have our
Lord’s example of how to live here."
"If we could be sure,” said Eleanor, "just
what that example meant."
Hodder was silent a moment.
"You mean that you cannot accept what
the Church teaches about His life?" he
asked.
"No, I can't,” she faltered. “You have
helped me to say it. I want to have the
Church’s side better explained—that’s why
I’m here.”
"Please continue to be frank,” he begged.
"I can't believe in the doctrine of the
immaculate Conception.” she responded in
a low voice; “it seems to me so—so mate
rial. And I feel I am stating a difficulty
that many have. Mr. Hodder. Why should
it have been thought necessary for God to
have departed from what is really a sacred
and sublime fact in nature, to resort to a
material proof in order to convince a doubt
ing humanity that Jesus was His Son?"
"1 think people suffer in these days from
giving too much weight to the critics of
Christianity,” said th® rector, "from not
pondering more deeply on its underlying
truths-”
"I do," she murmured.
"And the more one reflects on the life of
our Lord, the more one is convinced that
rhe doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
is a vital essential; without it Christianity
falls to pieces, in spite of the contradic
tions of science, it explains as nothing else
can the mystery of the divinity as well as
the 1 imanity of the Saviour."
Eleanor was unconvinced. She felt, as
she listened, the pressure of his sincerity
and force, and had to strive to prevent her
thoughts from becoming confused.
"Os one thing I am assured, Mrs. Good
rich," Hodder replied, "that the logical re
sult of independent thinking is anarchy.
Under this modern tendency toward in
dividual creeds, the Church has split and
split again, until, if it keeps on, we shall
have no Church at all to carry on the work
of our Lord on earth History proves that
to take, anything away from the faith Is to
atrophy, to destroy it. The answer to your
arguments is to be seen on every side, athe
ism. hypodlisy. vice, misery, insane and
cruel grasping after wealth. There is only
one remedy I < an see.” he added, inflexibly,
yet with a touch of sadness, "believe.”
"What if we can't believe?” she asked.
"You can." He spoke with unshaken
conviction. “You can if you make the effort
and ' am sure you will."
Yet. as he stood in the window looking
after her retreating figure, there gradually
grew upon him a vague and uncomfortable
feeling that be had not been satisfactory,
and this was curiously coupled with the
realization that the visit had added a con
siderable increment to his already pro
nounced liking for Eleanor Goodrich. She
was, paradoxically, kind nf a prison—
such was the form the puzzle took.
The Clergyman's Conscience.
ONE bright and boisterous af
ternoon 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 runs in urbe, Waverly
Place and at the gold
block-letters written thereon, “No Thorough
fare.”
As Hodder penetrated this hallowed pre
cinct he recognized, on either hand, the rest
dences of several of his parishioners each
in its ample allotted space: Mrs. Larrab-
bees; the Laureston Greys; Thurston
Gore's, of which Mr. Wallis Plimpton was
now' the master—Mr. Plimpton, before
whose pertinacity the wails of Jericho had
fallen; and finally the queer, twisted Rich
ardson mansion of the Everett Constables,
whither he was bound, with its recessed
doorw'ay and tiny windows peeping out from
under medieval penthouses.
He was ushered into a library where the
shades were already drawn, where a white
clamed tea-table was set before the fire,
the red rays dancing on the silver tea-kettle.
He stood picturing, now. the woman in
answer to whose summons he had come
With her finely chiseled features, her abun
dant wh.ee hair, her slim figure and erect
carriage she reminded him always of a
Vigee Lebrun portrait. He turned ait 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. I wanted
to taL, to you about Gertrude.”
He looked unenlightened.
“About my daughter. Mrs. Warren. She
lives in New York, jou know —on Long
Island.” •
Running through Hodders mind, a trou
bled current, were certain memories con
nected with Mrs. Warren. Was she the
divor"ed daughter, or was she not'’
“Lae's had such a hard time, poor dear,
my heart has bled for her.” There was a
barely perceptible tremor in Mrs. Consta
ble’s voice. “All that publicity, and the in
evitable 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 harp ness —the
real thing has come.”
"The real thing!” he echoed.
"Yes. She’s going to marry a splendid
man, E dridge Sumner. 1 know the family
well The- have always stood for public
spirit, and this Mr. Sumner, although he is
little over thirty, was chairman of that Vic-
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 -w as only a child
when she married Victor Warren.
« "Bui. Mr. Warren,” Hodder managed to
■ay “is still living."
"I sometimes wonder, Mr Hodder, she
went on hurriedly, "whether we c«» realize
how different the world is to-day from
what it was twenty years ago. until some
thing of this kind is actually brought home
to us. 1 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
diffeentiy in tne East, but out here—Wq
never dreamed that such a thing could
happen to us. and we regarded it as a dis
grace. 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
narried again, and Gertrude tells me he’s
■ •’div hum' and has two children.”
“You are telling me this, Mrs. Constable—
vhy?” lie asked
"Because I wished you to know the exact
situation before I asked you, as a great
favor to me, to Mr. Constable, to —to marrv
her in St. John's. Os course,” she went on,
controlling her rising agitation, and antici
pating a sign of protest, “we shouldn’t ex
pect to have any people—and Gertrude
wasn’t married in St John's before; that
wedding was at Passumset—our seashore
place. Oh, Mr. Hodder, before you answer,
think of our feelings, Mr. Constable’s and
mine! If you could see Mr. Constable, you
would know how he suffers ■•this thing has
upset him more than the divorce.”
She paused, breathing deeply, and Hodder
gazed at her with pity. What he felt was
more than pity; he was experiencing, indeed,
but with a deeper emotion, something cf
that same confusion cf values into which
Eh i nor Goodrich’s visit had thrown him.
“It gives me great pain to have to refuse
5 ou,” he said gently.
"Oh. don’t” she said, sharply, "don't say
that! 1 can't have made the case clear
You are too big. too comprehending, Mr.
Hodder, to have a hard-and-fast rule. There
must be times —extenuating circumstances —
and I believe the canons make it optional
for a clergyman to marry the innocent per
son.”
"Yes, it Is optional, but I do not believe it
should be. The question is left to the cler
gyman's conscience According to my view,
Mrs. Constable, the Church, as the agent of
God. effects an indissoluble bond And.
much as I should like to do anything in my
power for you and Mr. Constable, you have
as' ’be impossible
“But surely," she said, "we ought not tn
be punished for our mistakes! 1 cannot be f
lieve that Christ Himself intended that His
religion should be so inelastic, so hard and
fast, so cruel as you imply. Surely thorn is
enough unhappiness without making more."
Hodder did not attempt to refute her—she
had, indeed, made discussion impossible.
She knew his arguments, as she had de
• lared, and he had the intelligence to realize
that a repetition of them, on his part, would
be useless.
He sat gaz.lng at her. his head bent, his
strong bands on the arms of the chair.
"We never can foresee how we may
change,” he answered, a light in his eyes
that was like a smile, yet having no suggns
tion of levity And his voice—despite his
disagreement—maintained the quality of his
sympathy.
The continuation of this masterly novel is
in the July Hearst’s Magazine'. You will
find it at all newsstands, and tho price js
IS cents —or. better yet, mail a dollar bill to
Hearst's Magazine, 3kl Fourth ave, \ew
York City, and receive this magazine < ach
month for tho rest of this year, including a!l
■f 'his Intenselv |nt" r esting novel
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