"Aunt Bell, he's _killing_ me. I seem to want to laugh when I tell you, because it's so funny that he should have the power to--but I tell you he's killing out all the good in me--a little bit every day. I can't even _want_ to be good. Oh, how stupid to think you could see--that any one could see! Sometimes I do forget and laugh all at once. It's as grotesque and unreal as an imaginary monster I used to be afraid of--then I'm sick, for I remember we are bound together by the laws of G.o.d and man. Of course, you can't see, Aunt Bell--the fire hasn't eaten through yet--but I tell you it's burning inside day and night."

She laughed a little, as if to rea.s.sure her puzzled listener.

"A fire eating away inside, Aunt Bell--burning out my goodness--if the firemen would only come with engines and axes and hooks and things, and water--I'd submit to being torn apart as meekly as any old house--it hurts so!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE APPLE OF DOUBT IS NIBBLED

The rector of St. Antipas came from preaching his Easter sermon. He was elated. Of the sermons delivered in New York that morning, he suspected that his would be found not the least ingenious. Telling excerpts would doubtless appear in the next day's papers, and at least one paper would reprint his favourite likeness over the caption, "Dr. Allan Delcher Linford, the Handsome and Up-to-Date Rector of St. Antipas." Under this would be head-lines: "The Resurrection Proved; a Literal Fact in History not less than a Spiritual Fact in the Human Consciousness. An Unbroken Chain of Living Witnesses."

He even worded sc.r.a.ps of the article on his way from the church to his study:

"An unusually rich Easter service was held at fashionable St. Antipas yesterday morning. The sermon by its able and handsome young rector, the Reverend Dr. Linford, was fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. The Resurrection he declares to be a fact as well attested as the Brooklyn Bridge is to thousands who have never seen it--yet who are convinced of its existence upon the testimony of those who have. Thus one who has never seen this bridge may be as certain of its existence as a man who crosses it twice a day. In the same way, a witness to the risen Christ tells the glorious truth to his son, a lad of fifteen, who at eighty tells it to his grandson. 'Do you realise,' said the magnetic young preacher, 'that the a.s.surance of the Resurrection comes to you this morning by word of mouth through a scant three thousand witnesses--a living chain of less than three thousand links by which we may trace our steps back to the presence of the first witness--so that, in effect, we have the Resurrection on the word of a man who beheld the living Saviour this very morning? Nay; further, in effect we ourselves stand trembling before that stone rolled away from the empty but forever hallowed tomb. As certainly as thousands know that a structure called the Brooklyn Bridge exists, so upon testimony of the same validity do we know that "G.o.d so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed on him might not perish but have everlasting life." G.o.d has not expected us to trust blindly: he has presented tangible and compelling evidence of his glorious scheme of salvation.'

The speaker, who is always imbued with the magnetism of a striking personality, was more than usually effective on this occasion, and visibly moved the throng of fashionable worshippers that--"

"Allan, you outdid yourself!" Aunt Bell had come in and, in the mirror over the dining-room mantel, was bestowing glances of unaffected but strictly impartial admiration upon the bonnet of lilac blossoms that rested above the l.u.s.trous puffs of her plenteous gray hair.

The young man looked up from his meditative pacing of the room.

"Aunt Bell, I think I may say that I pleased myself this morning--and you know that's not easy for me."

"It's too bad Nance wasn't there!"

"Nancy is not pleasing me," began her husband, in gentle tones.

"I didn't feel equal to it, Allan," his wife called from the library.

"Oh, you're there! My dear, you give up too easily to little indispositions that another woman would make nothing of. I've repeated that to you so often that, really, your further ignoring it appears dangerously like perverseness--"

"Is she crying?" he asked Aunt Bell, as they both listened.

"Laughing!" replied that lady.

"My dear, may I ask if you are laughing at me?"

"Dear, no!--only at something I happened to think of." She came into the dining-room, a morning paper in her hand. "Besides, in to-morrow's paper I shall read all about what the handsome rector of St. Antipas said, in his handsome voice, to his handsome hearers--"

He had frowned at first, but now smiled indulgently, as they sat down to luncheon. "You _will_ have your joke about my appearance, Nance! That reminds me--that poor romantic little Mrs. Eversley--sister of Mrs.

Wyeth, you know--said to me after service this morning, 'Oh, Dr.

Linford, if I could only believe in Christian dogma as I believe in _you_ as a man!' You know, she's such a painfully emotional, impulsive creature, and then Colonel G.o.dwin who stood by had to have _his_ joke: 'The symbol will serve you for worship, Madam!' he says; 'I'm sure no woman's soul would ever be lost if all clergymen were as good to look upon as our friend here!' Those things always make me feel so awkward--they are said so bluntly--but what could I do?"

"Mr. Browett's sister and her son were out with him this morning," began Aunt Bell, charitably entering another channel of conversation from the intuition that her niece was wincing. But, as not infrequently happened, the seeming outlet merely gave again into the main channel.

"And there's Browett," continued the Doctor. "Now I am said to have great influence over women--women trust me, believe me--I may even say look up to me--but I pledge you my word I am conscious of wielding an immensely greater influence over men. There seems to be in my _ego_ the power to prevail. Take Browett--most men are afraid of him--not physical fear, but their inner selves, their _egos_, go down before him. Yet from the moment I first saw that man I dominated him. It's all in having an _ego_ that means mastery, Aunt Bell. Browett has it himself, but I have a greater one. Every time Browett's eyes meet mine he knows in his soul that I'm his master--his _ego_ prostrates itself before mine--and yet that man"--he concluded in a tone of distinguishable awe--"is worth all the way from two to three hundred millions!"

"Mrs. Eversley is an unlucky little woman, from what I hear," began Aunt Bell, once more with altruistic aims.

"That reminds me," said the Doctor, recalling himself from a downward look at the grovelling Browett, "she made me promise to be in at four o'clock. Really I couldn't evade her--it was either four o'clock to-day or the first possible day. What could I do? Aunt Bell, I won't pretend that this being looked up to and sought out is always disagreeable.

Contrary to the Pharisee, I say 'Thank G.o.d I _am_ as other men are!' I have my human moments, but mostly it bores me, and especially these half-religious, half-sentimental confidences of emotional women who imagine their lives are tragedies. Now this woman believes her marriage is unhappy--"

"Indeed, it is!" Aunt Bell broke in--this time effectually, for she proceeded to relate of one Morris Upton Eversley a catalogue of inelegancies that, if authoritative, left him, considered as a husband, undesirable, not to say impracticable. His demerits, indeed, served to bring the meal to a blithe and chatty close.

Aunt Bell's practice each day after luncheon was, in her own terminology, to "go into the silence and concentrate upon the thought of the All-Good." She was recalled from the psychic state on this afternoon, though happily not before a good half-hour, by Nancy's knock at her door.

She came in, cheerful, a small sheaf of papers in her hand. Aunt Bell, finding herself restored and amiable, sat up to listen.

Nancy threw herself on the couch, with the air of a woman about to chat confidentially from the softness of many gay pillows, dropping into the att.i.tude of tranquil relaxation that may yet bristle with eager mental quills.

"The drollest thing, Aunt Bell! This morning instead of hearing Allan, I went up to that trunk-room and rummaged through the chest that has all those old papers and things of Grandfather Delcher's. And would you believe it? For an hour or more there, I was reading bits of his old sermons."

"But he was a Presbyterian!" In her tone and inflection Aunt Bell ably conveyed an exposition of the old gentleman's impossibility--lucidly allotting him to spiritual fellowship with the head-hunters of Borneo.

"I know it, but, Aunt Bell, those old sermons really did me good; all full of fire they were, too, but you felt a _man_ back of them--a good man, a real man. You liked him, and it didn't matter that his terminology was at times a little eccentric. Grandfather's theology fitted the last days of his life about as crinoline and hoop-skirts would fit over there on the avenue to-day--but he always made me feel religious. It seemed sweet and good to be a Christian when he talked.

With all his antiquated beliefs he never made me doubt as--as I doubt to-day. But it was another thing I wanted to show you--something I found--some old compositions of Bernal's that his grandfather must have kept. Here's one about birds--'jingle-birds, squeak-birds and clatter-birds.' No?--you wouldn't care for that?--well--listen to this."

She read the youthful Bernal's effort to rehabilitate the much-blemished reputation of Judas--a paper that had been curiously preserved by the old man.

"Poor Judas, indeed!" The novelty was not lost upon Aunt Bell, expert that she was in all obliquities from accepted tradition.

"The funny boy! Very ingenious, I'm sure. I dare say no one ever before said a good word for Judas since the day of his death, and this lad would canonise him out of hand. Think of it--St. Judas!"

Nancy lay back among the cushions, talking idly, inconsequently.

"You see, there was at least one man created, Aunt Bell, who could by no chance be saved--one man who had to betray the Son of Man--one man to be forever left out of the Christian scheme of salvation, even if every other in the world were saved. There had to be one man to disbelieve, to betray and to lie in h.e.l.l for it, or the whole plan would have been frustrated. There was a theme for Dante, Aunt Bell--not the one soul in h.e.l.l, but the other souls in heaven slowly awakening to the suffering of that one soul--to the knowledge that he was suffering in order that they might be saved. Do you think they would find heaven to be real heaven if they knew he was burning? And don't you think a poet could make some interesting talk between this solitary soul predestined to h.e.l.l, and the G.o.d who planned the scheme?"

Aunt Bell looked bored and uttered a swift, low phrase that might have been "Fiddlesticks!"

"My dear, no one believes in h.e.l.l nowadays."

"Does any one believe in anything?"

"Belief in the essentials of Christianity was never more apparent."

It was a treasured phrase from the morning's sermon.

"What are the essentials?"

"Belief that G.o.d so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son--you know as well as I, child--belief in the atoning blood of the Christ."

"Wouldn't it be awful, Aunt Bell, if you didn't believe in it, and had to be in h.e.l.l because the serpent persuaded Eve and Eve persuaded Adam to eat the apple--that's the essential foundation of Christianity, isn't it?"

"Why, certainly--you must believe in original sin--"