The Unhallowed Harvest/Chapter 18
On the afternoon of the day following his fruitless interview with the president of the Malleson Manufacturing Company, the rector of Christ Church sat alone in his study, immersed in thought. Not pleasant thought; far from it. The times were too sadly out of joint for that, the outlook was too darkly threatening. His own path was filled, not only with obstacles ahead, but with failures and wrecks behind. His dream of fusing the classes together in Christian fellowship in Christ Church had not been fulfilled. His months of effort in that behalf had not only been wasted, but had resulted in widening the breach between the very classes he would have brought together. He had succeeded only in crippling and disorganizing his church, and in splitting the body of it in twain. He had offended, antagonized, and driven from his communion, many of the chief supporters of the church, and not a few of its most devout and zealous members. Alas! their places had not been filled by people of any class. He had made no substantial inroad into the ranks of the toilers. Few of those who had at first flocked to his standard remained to help him fight his battles. Fewer still accepted the creed of his Church, or declared their intention of uniting with it. The throngs that, during the first months of his crusade, had come to hear him preach the new gospel of Christian fellowship, had fallen sadly away. There was now room, and plenty of it, in all the pews, at all the services. The treasury of the church was empty, its obligations were unpaid, many of its institutions were either dormant or wholly abandoned. He, himself, refusing to accept the bounty of his treasurer, or the charitable offerings of those few among the wealthier of his parishioners who still stood listlessly by him, was facing an ever-increasing burden of personal debt. What was wrong? Had God forsaken him? Had the Son of God repudiated the doctrine laid down in His Holy Scriptures? Had that doctrine been divinely carved into his believing heart in simple mockery? They were indeed disturbing, insidious, sinister thoughts with which he struggled that day.
In the midst of his contemplation Barry Malleson entered. It was evident, even before he spoke, that something had gone wrong with him. He had lost his air of easy self-assurance. He had a troubled look; his eyes were widely open as if in sorrow, at the cause of which he was still wondering. His face was unshaven, his hair was rumpled, his clothes hung loosely on him, and his soft shirt and flowing tie, the like of which he had affected since his conversion to socialism, were soiled and awry.
"Well, Farrar," he said, "it's all up with me. I came over to tell you."
"What's up, Barry?" The rector had already jumped to the conclusion that there had been serious trouble with Mary Bradley. But in that he was wrong.
"I've had a break," replied Barry, "with the president of the company. I have resigned my position as vice-president."
The situation became at once plain to the minister.
"Was your resignation demanded?" he asked.
"You may say so, yes. I have also been ordered to keep away from the office and the plant."
"For what reason?"
"The president doesn't wish to have any socialist on the premises."
"That's absurd! He has a very narrow mind."
"He has a very determined mind when he's once made it up, and he's made it up all right so far as I am concerned. I have decided also, Farrar, to withdraw from his house and family."
"Why should you do that?"
"He says I may stay there as a matter of grace on his part. But, you know, that's contrary to our creed. We socialists don't believe in charity. What we want is simple justice."
It sounded gruesome and uncanny, coming from Barry's lips, this repetition of a doctrine that the rector himself had spread broadcast. Was this another victim of an unsound creed? The question forced itself in upon the minister's mind with appalling insistence. "But, Barry," he exclaimed, "this is tragic! It is unnecessarily tragic! Does he give you no alternative?"
"Oh, yes. He'll take it all back on certain conditions. You see he's practically disowned and disinherited me now. If I'll do what he wants me to he'll restore me to his favor."
"What does he want you to do?"
"Well, in the first place he wants me to cut out socialism. I can't cut out socialism, Farrar. I believe in it. It's the road to comfort and peace and happiness for the human race."
How trite and hollow the pet phrase sounded in the face of a calamity like this! From whom had he learned it, that he should repeat it, parrot-like, to the confusion of his host? The rector turned sad eyes on his visitor.
"Is that all you are to do, Barry?"
"Oh, no! I've got to repudiate you, and everything you stand for. Can you imagine me doing that, Farrar? Why, I've looked up to you as the biggest and bravest and brainiest man in this city. I'd follow you straight to the bottomless pit, if you said the word."
"Barry! Oh, Barry! Am I leading you to destruction?"
"The president says so. That's where he and I can't agree. He says I'm just simply your dupe. He says I have no mind of my own. He says I've turned over to you for safe-keeping what little brains I ever had. Now, Farrar, that was going a step too far, and I told him so. I'm no fool. You know that. I've got as much good sense and sound judgment as the next man. And I won't permit any one, not even my own father, to call me a fool. Would you?"
The rector did not answer him. How could he? The situation was too pathetic, too tragic, to permit of either a confirmation or denial of the correctness of the young man's attitude.
But Barry did not wait for a reply. He hurried on:
"And that isn't all, Farrar. He says I've got to throw the widow overboard."
"Mrs. Bradley?"
"Yes, Mrs. Bradley. He says I've got to break with her, lock, stock and barrel. Now, you know, Farrar, I can't do that. I never could do that. It's impossible! Why, I'd as soon think of breaking with God!"
He did not mean to be irreverent. He was simply in dead earnest, and he looked it. But he was also in deep distress, and his distress wrung the heart of the sympathetic and self-accusing rector of Christ Church.
"Barry," he said, "if I am responsible in any way for the misfortunes that have overtaken you—and God knows I may be—I ask your forgiveness from the bottom of my heart."
Barry smiled at that. "Oh, now look here, Farrar," he replied. "I didn't come here to put any blame on you. You've been my friend and counselor, not my enemy—never my enemy."
"Thank you, Barry. Thank you a thousand times! Now tell me what I can do to help you. I would be the basest ingrate on earth if I did not stand by you to the limit of my power."
"Nothing, Farrar, nothing. I don't want help—just companionship."
Quick tears sprang to the rector's eyes, and he went over and laid an affectionate arm about the young man's shoulders.
"You shall have it," he said. "You shall have my heart's best."
The echo of the front-door bell came to Barry's ears from somewhere in the house, and he started up in alarm, and cast an apprehensive glance down the hall through the half-opened door. In the distance he caught sight of a woman's skirts, and heard, indistinctly, her voice in inquiry.
"It's Jane," he whispered. "She's followed me here. She's got me cornered. Farrar, if you really want to do something for me, you've got a chance to do it now."
"What shall I do, Barry?"
"Switch her off the track. I can't meet her to-day. Positively I can't. I—I'm in no condition."
"You don't need to meet her."
"But she'll insist on it. She knows I'm here. Can't—can't you let me out the back way?"
He stood there, a picture of abject fright, and cringing irresolution. He had not been afraid to talk face to face with Richard Malleson, but in the prospect of meeting Jane Chichester he became the veriest coward. The rector led him through the dining-room to the side-door of the rectory, and thence he made his escape to the street.
But it was not, after all, Jane Chichester who had called. When Mr. Farrar returned to the library he found Ruth Tracy there awaiting him.
"Barry was here," he said, "and you gave him a great fright."
"Indeed! How was that?"
"He thought it was Jane Chichester who came in."
"Why should he be frightened at Jane?"
"Oh, I'm not sure but that he has good reason to be. At any rate I helped him to make his escape by the back door. He would have been quite willing that I should 'let him down by the wall in a basket,' after the manner of Saul's escape from his enemies at Damascus. Barry is somewhat nervous to-day, anyway. He came to tell me that his father has disowned him."
"Because of his conversion to socialism?"
"Yes, and because of his adherence to me and to my cause, and because of his friendly relations with Mrs. Bradley."
"I'm sorry. How does he take it?"
"Like a hero. But, Miss Tracy, I can't get it out of my mind that in some way I am responsible for his misfortunes. Perhaps I should not have encouraged him, perhaps I should not have permitted him, to cast in his lot with us."
"You have no cause for self-accusation on that account, Mr. Farrar. You have set up a standard under which all men, whether wise or foolish, should not hesitate to gather. You cannot discriminate. To do so would be destructive to your cause."
"In these distressing times I have even had doubts concerning the righteousness of my cause."
She looked up at him in alarm. Had the fight been too strenuous for him, the strain too severe? Was he, after all, about to yield? to become just common clay? She, herself, had come to the rectory, despondent and despairing, to obtain new courage and strength from him. The burden of the suffering that she had witnessed during these last terrible weeks was crushing the leaven of optimism out of her heart. Were they both now to go weakly down together to defeat and disaster? A wave of stubborn aggressiveness swept into her soul. She would not permit it. She would not listen to so sinister a suggestion. She would rise in her own strength and save both him and herself.
"You have no right," she declared, "to say that. Why do you harbor such a doubt?"
"Because it seems to me that if God were with me my church would not be falling into decay. Even the people in whose behalf we have fought are leaving us."
"That is because, in these times, they are too ill-clothed, too hungry, too wretched to come to church. They do not realize that for these very reasons they stand in greater need of the consolation of religion."
"True. But you can't thrust religion down the throat of a man who is perishing from hunger. And the thought that distresses me is that I may have been in some way or to some extent responsible for all this suffering. If I had not preached to the laboring men, as I have, the gospel of discontent with things as they are, it may be that these dreadful days would not have come."
He rose from his chair and began pacing up and down the room. She saw that he was in distress, and that if she would help him she must refute his argument.
"You have simply preached God's truth to them," she declared. "If they have profited by it to seek to better their condition, that fact redounds to your credit. It is those who oppress them who are responsible for this frightful situation; it is not you, nor your teachings, nor because the men have followed you."
He was still walking rapidly up and down the room.
"But, Miss Tracy," he asked, "if I am right why are not the men of my parish with me? If they were with me to-day, if we were acting as one, Christ Church would be a power in the alleviation of distress. As it is we are almost helpless."
At that her anger rose. She had not been able to forgive the men who were permitting Christ Church and its charities to go to wreck in a time like this, because of their resentment toward the rector.
"They are not with you because their hearts are evil," she declared. "Because they have no conception of the real meaning of Christ's religion. They are not Christians. They are scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! I detest them!"
He stopped in his walk and looked down on her. Her cheeks were blazing. Her eyes were flashing with indignation. It was plain that her patience with the men who had hampered and hindered the rector of Christ Church in his work of saving the bodies and souls of the poor was exhausted.
"Thank you!" he said. "That was not pious, but it was most comforting."
He went and sat down opposite to her at the library table on which her hands were lying as she faced him.
"And you have been my comfort," he added, "through all these dreadful weeks."
"I am glad," she replied, "that I could be of service to you." But the aggressive note in her voice was gone, and her eyes were turned from him.
He reached over and took her hands, one in each of his.
"You have been my mainstay," he said. "I could not have done my work without you. I could not have lived through it without you."
Extravagant, unwise, impulsive, he did not realize the depth of the meaning of his words. But she did. Her eyes met his and fell. Her cheeks paled. Her hands lay limp in his. It was but a moment. Some gentlemanly instinct moved him, some high-born spirit of noblesse oblige, some God-given sense of what a pure-hearted man owes to himself. He released her hands and rose from his chair.
"I must leave you," he said, "and go to the workmen's meeting at Carpenter's Hall. It is already past time." And he added: "Will you not wait and see Mrs. Farrar? You can help her. She is very despondent and wretched. Give her some cheering thought. I will ask her to come in."
He left the room, and in it he left his visitor alone.
Five minutes is not a long time within which to grasp one's soul and draw it back from the brink of disaster. But Ruth Tracy had always been quick and courageous in meeting emergencies, and she was quick and courageous to-day. It was at the end of this five minutes that Mrs. Farrar entered the library. One who had known her six months before would hardly have recognized her now. Worn with her household tasks, harassed by the troubles of the time, sick at heart to the verge of prostration, she looked it all. Her face was gray, her cheeks were sunken, her lips were colorless, deep shadows rested under her eyes inflamed by much weeping.
"Mr. Farrar told me," she said, "that you wished to see me."
"Only to say to you," replied Ruth, remembering her instructions, "that better times are coming; that the clouds will soon roll by."
"You only say that to try to comfort me," was the response. "You do not really believe it in your heart."
"But things cannot go on this way forever, Mrs. Farrar. Even if the climax has not yet been reached it must come soon. April is almost here, and warmer weather. Under sunny skies the men will find more work to do; there will be less suffering in their families."
"I am not thinking about the men and their families, Miss Tracy. I am thinking about myself, and my children, and Mr. Farrar."
"I know. It has been dreadful. But you have been very patient. And Mr. Farrar has been a hero. And things are going to be better."
"No, I haven't been patient. I haven't reconciled myself to the situation at all. I have been placed in a most cruel position. I suppose Mr. Farrar is right. I know he must be right, because he is a good man. But if only it could have been done without making me suffer so!"
She put her handkerchief to her eyes to dry the ready tears. Tears had come so freely and so frequently in these last days.
Ruth, moved with deep pity, crossed the room, and sat by her, and took her hand in both of her own.
"I am so sorry for you," she said; "so sorry. But you know Mr. Farrar could not have done otherwise than he has done without belittling his calling as a minister. And you, as his wife, must try to forget yourself and your troubles, and help and comfort and encourage him."
"I can't, Miss Tracy. It's impossible. I lack both the strength and the ability. I haven't what he calls 'the vision.' I haven't any of the qualities that fit a woman to be a minister's wife, and he knows it, and he has told me so."
"Mrs. Farrar, you must be mistaken. Surely he would not"
"No, I am not mistaken. It's all true. He knows I am utterly incapable, and he treats me accordingly. He never consults me about his work or his plans. He doesn't even mention them to me any more. I don't blame him. He knows it would be useless. I can't understand them, and I can't understand him nor sympathize with any of his views. I'm only a drag on him—a burden. It would be so much better if I were entirely out of his way."
"Mrs. Farrar! You must not talk so."
"But it's true. And I shall be out of his way. I can't endure a life like this. I shall die. I hope, for his sake, that I shall die soon. Then he will be free to marry one who will understand him, and sympathize with him, and be a companion to him as well as a wife."
"Mrs. Farrar! You are beside yourself. You have brooded too much over your troubles. You have been left too much alone. You must come oftener to see me, and I will come oftener to the rectory."
"Yes. That will please Mr. Farrar. He depends so much upon you. You are his mainstay. He could not have done his work without you. I doubt if he could have lived through all this without you, Miss Tracy."
This echo of the rector's words fell upon the girl's brain like hammer blows on an anvil. She felt herself growing weak, unsteady, at a loss how to reply. With a great effort she pulled herself together, and at last she said, unconscious echo of her own words spoken to the rector:
"I am glad to have been of service to Mr. Farrar." Then, gathering still greater self-control, she added: "But now I want to do even more for you, because I feel that yours is the greater need."
And the woman replied:
"The greatest service you can do for me is to be good to my children after I am gone."
"But, Mrs. Farrar, you are not going to die. It—it's absurd!"
"Oh, yes. I am going to die. I've thought it all out. I'm going to die, and you are going to marry Mr. Farrar."
"Mrs. Farrar!"
The girl sprang to her feet and put her hands before her eyes, shocked at this full revelation of the other woman's mind.
The minister's wife went on mechanically:
"Oh, I don't charge you with having planned it in advance. You are too good to do that, and he is too loyal to me. But you are going to marry him, nevertheless, and it will be an ideal marriage. You will make him a perfect wife"
"Mrs. Farrar, stop! You must not say such things! You are wild!"
Ruth's face was scarlet, and her eyes were wide with horror. But Mrs. Farrar would not stop.
"You will make him a perfect wife," she repeated. "You are in such close accord. He will be very fond of you, and you will both be very happy; very happy!"
"Stop! I'll not listen to you!" The girl put both hands to her ears and backed away. "I'll not listen to you," she repeated. "I'll not stay!"
Mrs. Farrar rose from her chair and followed her guest toward the door.
"There's only one thing I want to ask of you besides being good to my children after I am gone, and that is that you will not take Mr. Farrar's love away from me during the little while that I shall live." She held out her hands imploringly, and her voice rose in a passion of entreaty: "If you only knew how I have loved him, and what he has been to me, and how I want him for just this little while"
But her guest had gone. Shocked, humiliated, terrified, she had turned her back to the beseeching woman, and had fled through the hall, out at the door, and down the steps to the walk and to the street. She pulled close the thick veil that had shielded her face from the March wind, so that it might also shield it from the gaze of the people whom she should meet, and hurried, with ever-increasing consternation, toward her home.
What had happened? What had she done? Of what had she been guilty? Whose fault was it that this dreadful thing had come to pass? Vivid, soul-searching questions and thoughts tumbled tumultuously through her brain. Memories of the last half year came flooding back into her mind. Talks, confidences, sympathies, greetings and farewells, the touch of his hands on hers that day, the look in his eyes, in her own heart the emotion that she could not, and dared not attempt to define. And the wider her thought went, the more deeply she searched herself, the redder grew the blush of shame upon her cheeks, the more intolerable became her burden of humiliation. And always, in her mental vision, stood that distracted woman, with the gray face and beseeching eyes, and white lips moving with words that no wife should have spoken, and no other woman should have heard.
At the foot of the broad street that leads up to Fountain Park she met Philip Westgate. She would have passed him by, but he blocked her path.
"I have just come from your home," he said. "There is something I want to tell you. May I walk back there with you?"
"I can't see you to-day," she replied. "I am too tired to talk, or to listen."
"It will take but a minute. It is important."
"Then tell it to me here."
But she did not stop. She walked on and he walked with her.
"I have no right to interfere," he said, "save the right that any man has to try to prevent disaster to a friend."
"I understand. Go on. What is it you wish to say to me?"
"This—that you are wearing yourself out, body and mind, in a cause that is utterly unworthy of you. The sacrifice is not only deplorable, it is useless."
"You have told me that before. But I have been doing God's work among the poor, Philip, while you and those who believe as you do have hindered and crippled and made almost useless what might have been the most powerful instrumentality in the city for their relief."
He did not resent her criticism, nor did he make any effort to defend himself. His thought was only of her.
"I am not chiding you," he said, "for what you have done in the name of charity. You have been a good angel to those in distress. In everything—I say in everything—you have acted from the noblest of motives, with the purest of hearts."
"I have, Philip. Oh, I have! Believe me—in everything."
In her eagerness she stopped and turned toward him, and, beneath the thickness of her veil, he saw, by her face, that she was under the stress of some great emotion.
"Beyond the shadow of a doubt," he replied, as they walked on. "But you have been unwise; misguided. You have thrown in your fortunes with an impractical zealot, and he has led you into dangerous paths. I want to rescue you. That is my mission to you to-day."
"To rescue me? From what?"
"From the disaster that is bound very soon to overtake the rector of Christ Church and all his visionary schemes. From the gossip of evil-minded persons who have linked your name with his."
"Philip!"
"Forgive me! I had to say it. There was no one else to tell you."
"Philip! Have you believed it of me?"
"No, dear, no." He dropped into the old, affectionate way of speaking to her, but she did not dream of chiding him. "You have been absolutely blameless," he continued. "I have already told you so. But it is time now for you to stop and count the cost. I do not ask you to do it for my sake. I ask you to do it for your own; for the sake of your father who grieves over you; for the sake of your mother who is almost distracted."
She did not answer his appeal; perhaps she did not hear it; but she questioned him again:
"Philip, do you charge Mr. Farrar with any evil thought or motive?"
Even as she spoke her cheeks were reddened anew from the memories of the hour just passed.
"I am here to save you," he replied, "not to condemn him."
"But I want an answer. Has he been guilty of anything, within your knowledge, unbecoming a minister and a gentleman?"
"I am not here to smirch his reputation."
"What is it that he has done?"
"I do not care to tell you."
"That is cowardly, Philip. I have a right to know. If your solicitude for me is genuine you will tell me. If this man has been evil either in heart or conduct I must know it."
The hour of Westgate's temptation had come. Against her peremptory demand, against his own fierce desire to justify himself in the eyes of the woman whom he loved, arose the gentleman's instinct to speak no evil of another, to hold sacred the knowledge with which the rector had frankly intrusted him. And yet—could any time be more opportune, could any occasion be more appropriate than this to smash the idol which this woman had been worshiping to her own destruction? He looked into her eyes and was silent. They had reached the foot of the steps leading up to her door. She turned, grasped an ornament carved into the stone of the newel-post and faced him insistently.
"Philip! Speak to me. Tell me what you know."
"I will not tell you, Ruth."
"Why not?"
"Because I respect myself, and I love you."
"You love me, and yet you come to me with the defaming gossip of the town, and when I ask you for facts that I may defend myself, you will not give them to me. You have entered into a conspiracy with him and his wife to wreck my peace of mind, and I shall end by hating all three of you."
She swept up the steps to her door; but when she reached it, some sudden wave of contrition, some dim realization of his manly self-restraint, entered her heart, and she turned and called him back, for he had already started away. She hurried down to meet him, and held out her hand, and he grasped it in both of his.
"Philip," she said, "forgive me! Such dreadful things have happened to-day that I am beside myself. Do not remember what I have said. Remember only that I—am grateful—to you."
Through the thick folds of her veil he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. He lifted her hand to his lips and, unabashed by the light of day or the peopled street, he kissed it. She made no sign of disapproval, but she drew her hand slowly from his grasp, turned again, ran up the steps, entered at her door and closed it, and left him standing, thrilled and amazed, in the center of the walk.