"Well--of course--if you prefer the 'debt-raiser'--" Theron began, and took the itemized account from Gorringe's knee as an excuse for not finishing the hateful sentence.

He looked down the foolscap sheet, line by line, with no special sense of what it signified, until his eye caught upon this little section of the report, bracketed by itself in the Secretary's neat hand:

INTEREST CHARGE.

First mortgage (1873) .. $1,000 ... (E. Winch) @7.. $ 70 Second mortgage (1776).. 1,700 ... (L. Gorringe) @6.. 102 Third mortgage (1878)... 2,100 ... (L. Pierce) @7.. 147 ------- ----- $4,800 $319

It was no news to him that the three mortgages on the church property were held by the three trustees. But as he looked once more, another feature of the thing struck him as curious.

"I notice that the rates of interest vary," he remarked without thinking, and then wished the words unsaid, for the two trustees in view moved uneasily on their seats.

"Oh, that's nothing," exclaimed Erastus Winch, with a boisterous display of jollity. "It's only Brother Gorringe's pleasant little way of making a contribution to our funds. You will notice that, at the date of all these mortgages, the State rate of interest was seven per cent. Since then it's b'en lowered to six. Well, when that happened, you see, Brother Gorringe, not being a professin' member, and so not bound by our rules, he could just as well as not let his interest down a cent. But Brother Pierce an' me, we talked it over, an' we made up our minds we were tied hand an' foot by our contract. You know how strong the Discipline lays it down that we must be bound to the letter of our agreements. That bein' so, we seen it in the light of duty not to change what we'd set our hands to. That's how it is, Brother Ware."

"I understand," said Theron, with an effort at polite calmness of tone.

"And--is there anything else?"

"There's this," broke in Brother Pierce: "we're commanded to be law-abiding people, an' seven per cent WAS the law an' would be now if them ragam.u.f.fins in the Legislation--"

"Surely we needn't go further into that," interrupted the minister, conscious of a growing stiffness in his moral spine. "Have we any other business before us?"

Brother Pierce's little eyes snapped, and the wrinkles in his forehead deepened angrily. "Business?" he demanded. "Yes, plenty of it. We've got to reduce expenses. We're nigh onto $300 behind-hand this minute.

Besides your house-rent, you get $800 free an' clear--that is $15.38 every week, an' only you an' your wife to keep out of it. Why, when I was your age, young man, and after that too, I was glad to get $4 a week."

"I don't think my salary is under discussion, Mr. Pierce--"

"BROTHER Pierce!" suggested Winch, in a half-shuckling undertone.

"Brother Pierce, then!" echoed Theron, impatiently. "The Quarterly Conference and the Estimating Committee deal with that. The trustees have no more to do with it than the man in the moon."

"Come, come, Brother Ware," put in Erastus Winch, "we mustn't have no hard feelin's. Brotherly love is what we're all lookin' after. Brother Pierce's meanin' wasn't agin your drawin' your full salary, every cent of it, only--only there are certain little things connected with the parsonage here that we feel you ought to bear. F'r instance, there's the new sidewalk we had to lay in front of the house here only a month ago.

Of course, if the treasury was flush we wouldn't say a word about it.

An' then there's the gas bill here. Seein' as you get your rent for nothin', it don't seem much to ask that you should see to lightin' the place yourself."

"No, I don't think that either is a proper charge upon me," interposed Theron. "I decline to pay them."

"We can have the gas shut off," remarked Brother Pierce, coldly.

"As soon as you like," responded the minister, sitting erect and tapping the carpet nervously with his foot. "Only you must understand that I will take the whole matter to the Quarterly Conference in July. I already see a good many other interesting questions about the financial management of this church which might be appropriately discussed there."

"Oh, come, Brother Ware!" broke in Trustee Winch, with a somewhat agitated a.s.sumption of good-feeling. "Surely these are matters we ought to settle amongst ourselves. We never yet asked outsiders to meddle with our business here. It's our motto, Brother Ware. I say, if you've got a motto, stand by it."

"Well, my motto," said Theron, "is to be behaved decently to by those with whom I have to deal; and I also propose to stand by it."

Brother Pierce rose gingerly to his feet, with the hesitation of an old man not sure about his knees. When he had straightened himself, he put on his hat, and eyed the minister sternly from beneath its brim.

"The Lord gives us crosses grievous to our natur'," he said, "an' we're told to bear 'em cheerfully as long as they're on our backs; but there ain't nothin' said agin our unloadin' 'em in the ditch the minute we git the chance. I guess you won't last here more 'n a twelvemonth."

He pulled his soft and discolored old hat down over his brows with a significantly hostile nod, and, turning, stumped toward the hall-door without offering to shake hands.

The other trustees had risen likewise, in tacit recognition that the meeting was over. Winch clasped the minister's hand in his own broad, hard palm, and squeezed it in an exuberant grip. "Don't mind his little ways, Brother Ware," he urged in a loud, unctuous whisper, with a grinning backward nod: "he's a trifle skittish sometimes when you don't give him free rein; but he's all wool an' a yard wide when it comes to right-down hard-pan religion. My love to Sister Ware;" and he followed the senior trustee into the hall.

Mr. Gorringe had been tying up his books and papers. He came now with the bulky parcel under his arm, and his hat and stick in the other hand.

He could give little but his thumb to Theron to shake. His face wore a grave expression, and not a line relaxed as, catching the minister's look, he slowly covered his left eye in a deliberate wink.

"Well?--and how did it go off?" asked Alice, from where she knelt by the oven door, a few minutes later.

For answer, Theron threw himself wearily into the big old farm rocking-chair on the other side of the stove, and shook his head with a lengthened sigh.

"If it wasn't for that man Gorringe of yours," he said dejectedly, "I think I should feel like going off--and learning a trade."

CHAPTER IV

On the following Sunday, young Mrs. Ware sat alone in the preacher's pew through the morning service, and everybody noted that the roses had been taken from her bonnet. In the evening she was absent, and after the doxology and benediction several people, under the pretence of solicitude for her health, tried to pump her husband as to the reason.

He answered their inquiries civilly enough, but with brevity: she had stayed at home because she did not feel like coming out--this and nothing more.

The congregation dispersed under a gossip-laden cloud of consciousness that there must be something queer about Sister Ware. There was a tolerably general agreement, however, that the two sermons of the day had been excellent. Not even Loren Pierce's railing commentary on the pastor's introduction of an outlandish word like "epitome"--clearly forbidden by the Discipline's injunction to plain language understood of the people--availed to sap the satisfaction of the majority.

Theron himself comprehended that he had pleased the bulk of his auditors; the knowledge left him curiously hot and cold. On the one hand, there was joy in the apparent prospect that the congregation would back him up in a stand against the trustees, if worst came to worst.

But, on the other hand, the bonnet episode entered his soul. It had been a source of bitter humiliation to him to see his wife sitting there beneath the pulpit, shorn by despotic order of the adornments natural to her pretty head. But he had even greater pain in contemplating the effect it had produced on Alice herself. She had said not a word on the subject, but her every glance and gesture seemed to him eloquent of deep feeling about it. He made sure that she blamed him for having defended his own gas and sidewalk rights with successful vigor, but permitted the sacrifice of her poor little inoffensive roses without a protest. In this view of the matter, indeed, he blamed himself. Was it too late to make the error good? He ventured a hint on this Sunday evening, when he returned to the parsonage and found her reading an old weekly newspaper by the light of the kitchen lamp, to the effect that he fancied there would be no great danger in putting those roses back into her bonnet.

Without lifting her eyes from the paper, she answered that she had no earthly desire to wear roses in her bonnet, and went on with her reading.

At breakfast the next morning Theron found himself in command of an unusual fund of humorous good spirits, and was at pains to make the most of it, pa.s.sing whimsical comments on subjects which the opening day suggested, recalling quaint and comical memories of the past, and striving his best to force Alice into a laugh. Formerly her merry temper had always ignited at the merest spark of gayety. Now she gave his jokes only a dutiful half-smile, and uttered scarcely a word in response to his running fire of talk. When the meal was finished, she went silently to work to clear away the dishes.

Theron turned over in his mind the project of offering to help her, as he had done so often in those dear old days when they laughingly began life together. Something decided this project in the negative for him, and after lingering moments he put on his hat and went out for a walk.

Not even the most doleful and trying hour of his bitter experience in Tyre had depressed him like this. Looking back upon these past troubles, he persuaded himself that he had borne them all with a light and cheerful heart, simply because Alice had been one with him in every thought and emotion. How perfect, how ideally complete, their sympathy had always been! With what absolute unity of mind and soul they had trod that difficult path together! And now--henceforth--was it to be different? The mere suggestion of such a thing chilled his veins. He said aloud to himself as he walked that life would be an intolerable curse if Alice were to cease sharing it with him in every conceivable phase.

He had made his way out of town, and tramped along the country hill-road for a considerable distance, before a merciful light began to lessen the shadows in the picture of gloom with which his mind tortured itself.

All at once he stopped short, lifted his head, and looked about him. The broad valley lay warm and tranquil in the May sunshine at his feet. In the thicket up the side-hill above him a gray squirrel was chattering shrilly, and the birds sang in a tireless choral confusion. Theron smiled, and drew a long breath. The gay clamor of the woodland songsters, the placid radiance of the landscape, were suddenly taken in and made a part of his new mood. He listened, smiled once more, and then started in a leisurely way back toward Octavius.

How could he have been so ridiculous as to fancy that Alice--his Alice--had been changed into someone else? He marvelled now at his own perverse folly. She was overworked--tired out--that was all. The task of moving in, of setting the new household to rights, had been too much for her. She must have a rest. They must get in a hired girl.

Once this decision about a servant fixed itself in the young minister's mind, it drove out the last vestage of discomfort. He strode along now in great content, revolving idly a dozen different plans for gilding and beautifying this new life of leisure into which his sanguine thoughts projected Alice. One of these particularly pleased him, and waxed in definiteness as he turned it over and over. He would get another piano for her, in place of that which had been sacrificed in Tyre. That beneficient modern invention, the instalment plan, made this quite feasible--so easy, in fact, that it almost seemed as if he should find his wife playing on the new instrument when he got home. He would stop in at the music store and see about it that very day.

Of course, now that these important resolutions had been taken, it would be a good thing if he could do something to bring in some extra money.

This was by no means a new notion. He had mused over the possibility in a formless way ever since that memorable discovery of indebtedness in Tyre, and had long ago recognized the hopelessness of endeavor in every channel save that of literature. Latterly his fancy had been stimulated by reading an account of the profits which Canon Farrar had derived from his "Life of Christ." If such a book could command such a bewildering mult.i.tude of readers, Theron felt there ought to be a chance for him.

So clear did constant rumination render this a.s.sumption that the young pastor in time had come to regard this prospective book of his as a substantial a.s.set, which could be realized without trouble whenever he got around to it.

He had not, it is true, gone to the length of seriously considering what should be the subject of his book. That had not seemed to him to matter much, so long as it was scriptural. Familiarity with the process of extracting a fixed amount of spiritual and intellectual meat from any casual text, week after week, had given him an idea that any one of many subjects would do, when the time came for him to make a choice.

He realized now that the time for a selection had arrived, and almost simultaneously found himself with a ready-made decision in his mind. The book should be about Abraham!

Theron Ware was extremely interested in the mechanism of his own brain, and followed its workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could be more remarkable, he thought, than to thus discover that, on the instant of his formulating a desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and behold! there his mind, quite on its own initiative, had the answer waiting for him! When he had gone a little further, and the powerful range of possibilities in the son's revolt against the idolatry of his father, the image-maker, in the exodus from the unholy city of Ur, and in the influence of the new nomadic life upon the little deistic family group, had begun to unfold itself before him, he felt that the hand of Providence was plainly discernible in the matter. The book was to be blessed from its very inception.