She still sat in the falling dusk, in the chair she had taken two hours before, when Aunt Bell came in, dressed for dinner.

"Mercy, child! Do you know how late it is?"

"What did you say, Aunt Bell?"

"I say do you know how late it is?"

"Oh--not too late!"

"Not too late--for what?"

There was a pause, then she said: "Aunt Bell, when a woman comes to make her very last effort at self-deception, why does she fling herself into it with such abandon--such pretentious flourishes of remorse--and things? Is it because some under layer of her soul knows it will be the last and will have it a thorough test? I wonder how much of an arrant fraud a woman may really be to herself, even in her surest, happiest moments."

"There you are again, wondering, wondering--instead of accepting things and dressing for dinner. Have you seen Allan?"

"Oh, yes--I've been seeing him for three days--through a gla.s.s, darkly."

Aunt Bell flounced on into the library, trailing something perilously near a sniff.

Bernal came down the stairs and stood in the door.

"Well, Nance!" He went to stand before her and she looked up to him.

There was still light enough to see his eyes--enough to see, also, that he was embarra.s.sed.

"Well--I've had quite a talk with Allan." He laughed a little constrained, uneasy laugh, looking quickly at her to see if she might be observing him. "He's the same fine old chap, isn't he?" Quickly his eyes again sought her face. "Yes, indeed, he's the same old boy--a great old Allan--only he makes me feel that I have changed, Nance."

She arose from her chair, feeling cramped and restless from sitting so long.

"I'm sure you haven't changed, Bernal."

"Oh, I must have!"

He was looking at her very closely through the dusk.

"Yes, we had an interesting talk," he said again.

He reached out to take one of her hands, which he held an instant in both his own. "He's a rare old Allan, Nance!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS OF THE GREAT MACHINE

For three days the brothers were inseparable. There were so many ancient matters to bring forward of which each could remember but a half; so many new ones, of which each must tell his own story. And there was a matter of finance between them that had been brought forward by Allan without any foolish delay. Each of them spoke to Nancy about it.

"Bernal has pleased me greatly," said her husband. "He agrees that Grandfather Delcher could not have been himself when he made that will--being made as it was directly after he sent Bernal off. He finds it absurd that the old man, so firm a Christian, should have disinherited a Christian, one devoted to the ministry of Jesus, for an unbeliever like Bernal. It is true, I talked to him in this strain myself, and I cannot deny that I wield even a greater influence over men than over women. I dare say I could have brought Bernal around even had he been selfish and stubborn. By putting a proposition forward as a matter of course, one may often induce another to accept it as such, whereas he might dispute it if it were put forward as at all debatable.

But as a matter of fact he required no talking to; he accepted my views readily. The boy doesn't seem to know the value of money. I really believe he may decide to make over the whole of the property to me. That is what I call a beautiful unselfishness. But I shall do handsomely by him--probably he can use some money in that cattle business. I had thought first of ten thousand dollars, but doubtless half that will be wiser. I shall insist upon his taking at least half that. He will find that unselfishness is a game two can play at."

Nancy had listened to this absently, without comment. Nor had Bernal moved her to speech when he said, "You know, Allan is such a sensitive old chap--you wouldn't guess how sensitive. His feelings were actually hurt because I'd kept him out of grandad's money all these years. He'd forgotten that I didn't know I was doing it. Of course the old boy was thinking what he'd have done in my place--but I think I can make it right with him--I'm sure now he knows I didn't mean to wrong him."

Yet during this speech he had shot furtive little questioning looks at her face, as if to read those thoughts he knew she would not put into words.

But she only smiled at Bernal. Her husband, however, found her more difficult than ever after communicating his news to her. He tried once to imagine her being dissatisfied with him for some reason. But this attempt he abandoned. Thereafter he attributed her coldness, aloofness, silence, and moodiness to some nervous malady peculiar to the modern woman. Bernal's presence kept him from noting how really p.r.o.nounced and unwavering her aversion had become.

Nor did Bernal note her att.i.tude. Whatever he may have read in Allan at those times when the look of cold apprais.e.m.e.nt was turned full upon him, he had come to know of his brother's wife only that she was Nancy of the old days, strangely surviving to greet him and be silent with him, or to wonder with him when he came in out of that preposterous machine of many wheels that they called the town. No one but Nancy saw anything about it to wonder at.

To Bernal, after his years in the big empty places, it was a part of all the world and of all times compacted in a small s.p.a.ce. One might see in it ancient Jerusalem, Syria, Persia, Rome and modern Babylon--with something still peculiar and uncla.s.sifiable that one would at length have to call New York. And to make it more absorbing, the figures were always moving. Where so many were pressed together each was weighted by a thousand others--the rich not less than the poor; each was stirred to quick life and each was being visibly worn down by the ceaseless friction.

When he had walked the streets for a week, he saw the city as a huge machine, a machine to which one might not even deliver a message without becoming a part of it--a wheel of it. It was a machine always readjusting, always perfecting, always repairing itself--casting out worn or weak parts and taking in others--ever replacing old wheels with new ones, and never disdaining any new wheel that found its place--that could give its cogs to the general efficiency, consenting to be worn down by the unceasing friction.

Looking down Broadway early one evening--a shining avenue of joy--he thought of the times when he had gazed across a certain valley of his West and dreamed of bringing a message to this spot.

Against the sky many electric signs flamed garishly. Beneath them were the little grinding wheels of the machine--satisfied, joyous, wisely sufficient unto themselves, needing no message--least of all the simple old truth he had to give. He tried to picture his message blazing against the sky among the other legends: from where he stood the three most salient were the names of a popular pugilist, a malt beverage and a theatre. The need of another message was not apparent.

So he laughed at himself and went down into the crowd foregathered in ways of pleasure, and there he drank of the beer whose name was flaunted to the simple stars. Truly a message to this people must be put into a sign of electric bulbs; into a phonograph to be listened to for a coin, with an automatic banjo accompaniment; or it must be put upon the stage to be acted or sung or danced! Otherwise he would be a wheel rejected--a wheel ground up in striving to become a part of the machine at a place where no wheel was needed.

For another experience cooling to his once warm hopes, the second day of his visit Allan had taken him to his weekly Ministers' Meeting--an affair less formidable than its t.i.tle might imply.

A dozen or so good fellows of the cloth had luncheon together each Tuesday at the house of one or another, or at a restaurant; and here they talked shop or not as they chose, the thing insisted upon being congeniality--that for once in the week they should be secure from bores.

Here Presbyterian and Unitarian met on common ground; Baptist, Catholic, Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Methodist--all became brothers over the soup. Weekly they found what was common and helpful to all in discussing details of church administration, matters of faith, methods of handling their charitable funds; or the latest heresy trial. They talked of these things amiably, often lightly. They were choice spirits relaxed, who might be grave or gay, as they listed.

Their vein was not too serious the day Bernal was his brother's guest, sitting between the very delightful Father Riley and the exciting Unitarian, one Whittaker. With tensest interest he listened to their talk.

At first there was a little of Delitzsch and his Babel-Bible addresses, brought up by Selmour, an amiable Presbyterian of shining bare pate and cheerful red beard, a man whom scandal had filliped ever so coyly with a repute of leanings toward Universalism.

This led to a brief discussion of the old and new theology--Princeton standing for the old with its definition of Christianity as "a piece of information given supernaturally and miraculously"; Andover standing for the new--so alleged Whittaker--with many polite and ingenious evasions of this proposition without actually repudiating it.

The Unitarian, however, was held to be the least bit too literal in his treatment of propositions not his own.

Then came Pleydell, another high-church Episcopalian who, over his chop and a modest gla.s.s of claret, declared earnest war upon the whole Hegel-Darwinian-Wellhausen school. His method of attack was to state baldly the destructive conclusions of that school--that most of the books of the Old Testament are literary frauds, intentionally misrepresenting the development of religion in Israel; that the whole Mosaic code is a later fabrication and its claim to have been given in the wilderness an historical falsehood. From this he deduced that a mere glance at the Bible, as the higher critics explain it, must convince the earnest Christian that he can have no share in their views. "Deprive Christianity of its supernatural basis," he said, "and you would have a mere speculative philosophy. Deny the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, and the Atonement becomes meaningless. If we have not incurred G.o.d's wrath through Adam's disobedience, we need no Saviour. That is the way to meet the higher criticism," he concluded earnestly.

As the only rule of the a.s.sociation was that no man should talk long upon any matter, Floud, the fiery and aggressive little Baptist, hereupon savagely reviewed a late treatise on the ethnic Trinities, put out by a professor of ecclesiastical history in a New England theological seminary. Floud marvelled that this author could retain his orthodox standing, for he viewed the Bible as a purely human collection of imperfect writings, the wonder-stories concerning the birth and death of Jesus as deserving no credence, and denied to Christianity any supernatural foundation. Polytheism was shown to be the soil from which all trinitarian conceptions naturally spring--the Brahmanic, Zoroastrian, Homeric, Plotinian, as well as the Christian trinity--the latter being a Greek idea engrafted on a Jewish stalk. The author's conclusion, by which he reached "an undogmatic gospel of the spirit, independent of all creeds and forms--a gospel of love to G.o.d and man, with another Trinity of Love, Truth and Freedom," was particularly irritating to the disturbed Baptist, who spoke bitterly of the day having dawned when the Church's most dangerous enemies were those critical vipers whom she had warmed in her own bosom.

Suffield, the gaunt, dark, but twinkling-eyed Methodist, also sniffed at the conclusion of the ethnic-trinities person. "We have an age of subst.i.tutes," he remarked. "We have had subst.i.tutes for silk and sealskin--very creditable subst.i.tutes, so I have been a.s.sured by a lady in whom I have every confidence--subst.i.tutes for coffee, for diamonds--subst.i.tutes for breakfast which are widely advertised--subst.i.tutes for medicine--and now we are coming to have subst.i.tutes for religion--even a subst.i.tute for h.e.l.l!"

Hereupon he told of a book he had read, also written by an orthodox professor of theology, in which the argument, advanced upon scriptural evidence, was that the wicked do not go into endless torment, but ultimately shrivel and sink into a state of practical unconsciousness.

Yet the author had been unable to find any foundation for universalism.

This writer, Suffield explained, holds that the curtain falls after the judgment on a lost world. Nor is there probation for the soul after the body dies. The Scriptures teach the ruin of the final rejecters of Christ; Christ teaches plainly that they who reject the Gospel will perish in the endless darkness of night. But eternal punishment does not necessarily mean eternal suffering; hence the hypothesis of the soul gradually shrivelling for the sin of its unbelief.

The amiable Presbyterian sniffed at this as a sentimental quibble.

Punishment ceases to be punishment when it is not felt--one cannot punish a tree or an unconscious soul. But this was the spirit of the age. With the fires out in h.e.l.l, no wonder we have an age of sugar-candy morality and cheap sentimentalism.

But here the Unitarian wickedly interrupted, to remind his Presbyterian brother that his own church had quenched those very certain fires that once burned under the pit in which lay the souls of infants unbaptised.