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VIII

Shortly after my return from Europe, I came into communication again with my family. First it was a letter from the Father. He regretted that so many years had passed without hearing from me. Knowing him as I did, I recognized in this a real apology for having tried to starve me into obedience. He had read my book with great pleasure and had been especially proud to learn that I had been chosen to represent our nation abroad. Then there was a little news of the village – a list of those who had died and been born and married. Oliver, he wrote, had recently been called to a pastorate in New York City. He gave me his address so that I might call. And he ended with the hope that I had conquered the doubts which had troubled my youth and won to the joy of religious peace.

It was a hard letter to answer. I had no more of the bitterness I once felt towards him. I wanted very much to give him news which would cheer him. And yet I knew that the one question which seemed really important to him – in regard to my religious beliefs – I could not answer frankly without giving him pain. I did the best I could to evade it.

About Oliver I was less certain. I had never liked him. I did not want to revive the connection. But I knew that it would please the Father to have me. I resolved to call, but having no enthusiasm for it, other engagements seemed more important, I kept postponing it.

But coming home to the Teepee one winter afternoon about five, I found that he had forestalled me by calling first. As I opened the door, I heard Nina's voice and then one that was strange – but I knew at once it was a clergyman's voice. They had not lit a lamp yet and the library was illumined only by the open fire. Norman was sitting on the divan playing with Marie's pig-tail – it was a habit with him, just as some men play with their watch charm. Nina had on her company manners and was doing the entertaining. The clergyman rose as I entered. He was tall and broad, on the verge of rotundity. He wore a clerical vest and collar and the fire light sparkled on a large gold cross which hung from his watch chain.

"Here he is," Nina said as I came in.

"I – am – very – glad – to – see – you – again – Arnold."

I did not realize who it was, until Norman spoke up.

"It's your cousin, Dr. Drake."

"Oh. Hello, Oliver," I said, shaking hands.

I realized at once that this had not been an entirely fitting way to respond to his dignified, almost pompous greeting. I find it hard not to portray Oliver in caricature. He was so utterly foreign to the life I was leading, so different from the people I knew that inevitably he looked outlandish – at times comical. I have always regretted that Browning did not write another poem, the reverse of "Bishop Blougram's Apology," giving us the free thinker's account of that interview.

At first Oliver seemed to me appallingly affected. But as I got to see more of him I changed the adjective to "adapted." Just as a practicing physician must develop certain mannerisms so had Oliver adapted himself to his metier. His voice was most impressive. It was his working capital and he guarded it with infinite care. He was as much afraid of a sore throat as an opera singer. He belonged to that sub-variety of his species which is called "liberal." He had accepted the theory of evolution end higher criticism. He prided himself on being abreast of his time. He strove – successfully – to give the impression of a broad-minded, cultured gentleman.

I think he enjoyed the flattery of success and he had the brains to win it. His wife, whom I met later was, I think, dominated by "social" ambitions. She also had brains. They were a strong team. Their progress had been a steady upward curve. From a small town to a small city, then from a mission chapel in Indianapolis to its biggest church, from there to Chicago and at last to a fashionable charge in New York. And when you saw Oliver this progress seemed inevitable.

Spirituality? I do not think he had need of any. It would have been an impediment to his progress. It was very hard to remember that he was the son of Josiah Drake.

"How long is it," he said in his suave, modulated voice, "since we saw each other. Not since I left you at your prep. school – at least fifteen years."

"More," I said, "twenty." I could think of nothing to say. His presence was rather oppressive. But it was part of his profession never to be awkward.

"Well. Now that we are in the same city, I trust we will see each other more frequently. You were in Europe when we arrived. I wasn't quite sure whether you were back yet or not. But I came in on the chance – I got your address from your publishers" – he made a congratulatory bow – "to see if we could have you for dinner next Friday. It's been a great pleasure to meet Mr. and Mrs. Benson, I envy you such friendship…"

"Nina," Norman interrupted, "has been chanting your praises for the last half hour."

"Ah. You cannot dodge your responsibilities that way, Mr. Benson," Oliver remarked, with rather heavy playfulness. "You have been a most effective chorus. Of course, Arnold," – he turned to me – "your friends will always be welcomed at our house. I would be very glad, and I am sure Mrs. Drake would be also, if you could bring them with you on Friday night."

Norman bounced off the divan, as if someone had exploded a bomb under him.

"Oh, no," he said. "We're very much obliged to you. But Nina and I never go out in society," – as Oliver looked a bit taken aback, Norman went on to explain. "You see our marriage was – well – picturesque. I've forgotten the date, but you can find the details in the files of any of our newspapers. Fortunately, my wife has no social ambitions, so we don't have to risk embarrassing people who are kind enough to invite us."

Oliver had regained his poise.

"Being a stranger to the city," he said, "I am of course ignorant of the matter to which you refer but" – he gracefully took Nina's hand – "I am quite sure that Mrs. Benson would honor any society. However if it would expose you to any embarrassment, I cannot, of course, insist."

Nina's attitude to Oliver after he was gone was amusing. She had evidently been impressed with his grandeur. But when Norman jokingly accused her of having fallen in love with him, she shuddered.

"No," she said with real but ludicrous solemnity – "I wouldn't like to be his wife."

Marie, who had had to undergo the ordeal of sitting on his knee, remarked that he did not know how to play.

But in spite of the dislike she had taken to him Nina made me tell in detail everything about the dinner party. It had, I am sure, been a great success from Mrs. Drake's point of view. There had been two Wall Street millionaires at the table, a great lawyer, a congressman and an ambassador. Because French came to me easily I had to entertain the latter's wife. The food and the wine had been exquisite. Socially a success, but humanly a barren affair.

I made my duty call on Mrs. Drake and would never have gone near them again, if it had not been for a letter I received from Oliver about a month later. He asked me to come for lunch to talk over a scheme he was working out for penal reform. It interested me immensely to see him and his wife working together. He began with a sonorous peroration. The reason the church was losing influence was that it did not take sufficient interest in social problems. He was developing this idea at some length when Mrs. Drake coughed.

"The idea is familiar," she said.

"Yes, my dear."

Coming, as he did, to the direction of one of New York's most influential churches, a congregation which included many people of great wealth, many people of great influence in the world of business and politics… Mrs. Blake coughed.

"I'm sure Cousin Arnold knows about the church."

"Yes, my dear. I was about to say…"

He was about to say that he felt it his duty to try to utilize this great force in the cause of human betterment. In a few minutes Mrs. Drake coughed again and said, "Naturally." He had given a good deal of consideration, prayerful consideration, to the subject: personally he was opposed to the church going into politics. He spoke of several well-known clergymen who had gone into the fight against Tammany Hall, he doubted their wisdom. Of course if one could be sure that all their congregation were republicans… The lunch was finished at this point and we went into the sumptuous library. Mrs. Drake took the subject out of his hand.

"You see, Cousin Arnold," she said, "we think that the role of the church should be conciliating. It is our object to attract people – all people to the church – not to alienate anyone. And the church cannot mix in any of the issues which are vexed – which have partisans on each side – without offending and driving people away. It is evident that the church must interest itself in social questions, must show that it is a power to overcome this horrible unrest. But it is very hard to find a social problem which is consistent with the conciliatory rôle which the church must preserve.

"When Oliver and I read your book, we both had the same inspiration. Here is just the very problem. What you wrote about the prisons is awful. And no one can object to the church taking a definite attitude on this question. The Master, himself has instructed us to visit those who are in prison."

"Exactly," Oliver put in.

But she did not give him time to go on. She rapidly laid before me their plan. Oliver was to call together a group of a dozen fellow clergymen, the most influential – I presume she meant the most fashionable – in each denomination. I was to speak to them and help him to get them interested. They would organize a committee, they would give out interviews to the newspapers, preach sermons on the subject, get some good bills introduced into the legislature – and make a great splash!

I sat back and listened to it with grim amusement. This was to be Oliver's debut in New York. In vulgar phrase it was a "press agent campaign." Oliver – the progressive, the fighting clergyman – was to get columns of free advertising. There would surely be a great mass meeting in one of the theaters and Oliver would get his chance to cast the spell of his oratory over fashionable New York. It was an admirable scheme. No attack on Tammany Hall, was not one of his deacons a director in the street car company? Did not the real owner of the gas company rent the most expensive pew in the church and did not complaisant Tammany Hall arrange to have the gas company's ashes removed by the city's street cleaning department? No support to the campaign for decent tenements, some of the congregation were landlords. And of course no playing with the dangerous subject of labor unions.

"J. H. Creet doesn't belong to your church, does he?" I asked.

"No," Mrs. Drake replied. "Why?"

"Well, he has a fat contract for manufacturing cloth for prison uniforms."

"J. H. Creet?" Oliver said, making a note. "A queer name. I never heard of it."

Their interest in the matter was evident, but where did I come in? Well – after all – publicity is a great thing. It must be the basis of every reform. I had very little faith in any real good coming from such a campaign, but at least it would call people's attention to the issue. It was not to be despised. So I fell in with the scheme.

Several outsiders have complimented me on the newspaper noise we made, supposing that I was the motive power of it. The praise belongs to Oliver – and his wife. It was remarkable the skill with which they handled it. It was amusing to watch the suave manoeuvres by which Oliver always secured the top line. For a month he worked hard, put in hours of real study. His great speech in Daly's was masterful. And then things fizzled out. None of the bills got past a second reading.

At one of the last conferences I had with Oliver, he asked me why I did not go to Tennessee and visit the Father.

"Why don't you have him come on here for a vacation?" I asked. "He hasn't been in New York since before the war."

Oliver shrugged his shoulders.

"I make a point of going out to see him every two years – but he'd be out of place here. The world has moved a lot since his day. He would not understand. He's the type of the old school. Progress is heresy. Why I'm sure he'd be shocked at my wearing a collar like this. He'd accuse me of papacy. I always put on mufti when I visit him."

It was the patronizing superiority of his tone that angered me. I realized suddenly how lonely the Father must be. I had always thought of him as quite happy in having a son who had followed in his footsteps. I am not sure but that with all my outspoken heresy, I was more of a true son to him than Oliver. I resolved to go out to Tennessee at my first opportunity.

I am half sorry I went. It was an unsuccessful visit. The barren little mountain village had changed not at all in the years I had been away. There were a few more battle monuments on the hillside and the people still talked of little beside the war. The big parsonage beside the barn-like church was just as I had left it. The Father's wants were looked after by the numerous progeny of Barnabas, the negro body servant who had followed him through the war.

I had been thrown out for my Godlessness and had been expected to go to the dogs. It was something of an affront to the traditions that I had not. To have written a book was a matter of fame in that little village. I found that the Father with childlike pride had boasted far and wide of my having been chosen as delegate to the prison congress at Rome. It was not to be accounted for that instead of coming back as the prodigal I should return as a "distinguished son." The minor prophets of the place were disappointed in me.

Even the Father was bewildered. He came down to the gateway to meet me – a fine old figure, leaning on his ebony cane, his undimmed eyes shining from under his shaggy white eyebrows. He put his arm over my shoulder as we walked back to the house, as though he was glad of someone to lean upon. And all through supper he talked to me about my father and mother. He told me again how my father had died bravely at the head of a dare-devil sortie out of Nashville. And he told me with great charm about the time when they had been children. We sat out on the porch for a while and he went on with his reminiscencing. Then suddenly he stopped.

"Oh," he said, "how I ramble. You will be wanting to go and call on Margot."

It was like visiting the ghosts. Margot had aged more than any of my generation. We were still under forty but her hair was quite gray. Her face had lost its beauty – pinched out by her narrow, empty life. And yet as she stood on the porch to greet me, as I came up the walk to her house, there was much of the old charm about her. There are few women like her nowadays. I knew many in my childhood – the real heroes of the great war. The women who in the bitter days of reconstruction, bound up the wounds of defeat, bore almost all the burdens and laid the foundations of the new South. They were gracious women, in spite of their arrogant pride in their breed. They knew how to suffer and smile.

We sat side by side on the porch – leagues and leagues apart. I found it strangely hard to talk with her. She told, in her quiet colorless voice, all her news. Her mother had died several years before. Al was married and established in Memphis and so forth. Just as the supply of news ran out, a rooster awoke from some bad dream and crowed sleepily.

"Margot," I said, "do you still steal eggs?"

"O Arnold," she laughed, "haven't you forgotten that? I have – almost. A long time ago I paid mother back and I saved fifteen dollars out of my allowance and sent it to the Presbyterian church."

I had always considered myself a fairly honest man, but it had never occurred to me to make restitution for these childish thefts.

"It was awful," she went on, "why did we do it?"

"Margot," I said, "haven't you ever committed a worse sin than that?"

She fell suddenly serious. It was several minutes before she replied.

"Yes, Arnold, I've been discontented and rebellious."

I looked out at the village street, at the uninteresting houses, at the glare of the "general store" where liquor was sold and where doubtless Col. Jennings, illumined by the moonshine whiskey of our mountains, was recounting to a bored audience of loafers some details of one of Stonewall Jackson's charges. It was needless to ask what it was that made her discontented, against what she had been rebellious. And the deadly torpor of that village life seemed to settle about me like a cloud of suffocating smoke. There sat beside me this fine spirited woman – useless. Her glorious potentiality of motherhood unused. Defrauded of her birth-right – wasted! I had an impulse to jump up and shake my fist at it all. I wanted to tell her that her greatest sin had been not to revolt more efficiently. But that would have been cruel now that her hair was so gray.

"Do you know who has helped me most?" she asked. "Your uncle. He is a saint, Arnold. We are great friends now. He came here one time when father was sick. He has been a wonderful comfort to me. Sometimes I go and call on him. He's very lonely. And he's such a gallant old gentleman. When I see him drive by in his buckboard I always wave to him and as soon as he's out of sight I go over to the house and scold the niggers. They would never do any work if somebody did not fuss them. And you know it makes me more contented to watch him. I say to myself that if such a wonderful man, so wise and learned can find plenty to do to serve the Master in this little village there must be quite enough for just a woman like me. There's a heap of comfort in that thought. But sometimes I read some story or think about you all out in the big world and it seems very small here – and lonely."

There was nothing I could think to say, so again we were silent.

"Arnold," she said suddenly. "Do you ever read King Arthur stories any more?"

"Whenever I get five minutes," I replied. "The people I live with have a little girl – Marie. I'm teaching them to her."

"I'm so glad – and Froissart?"

She went into the house and brought out the old soiled volume. We looked through it together and then she said that perhaps I would want to take it East for Marie. But I had a feeling that she wished to keep it. So I said Marie was too young for Froissart yet. Once more we fell silent. I remember the open book on her thin knees, her thin aristocratic hand between the pages, the profile of her face. Lamp-light shone out through the window upon her and she looked almost beautiful again.

I am never sure of what is in a woman's heart. But I could not explain the constraint upon us except that perhaps she had always been waiting for my homecoming, still nourishing in her heart our childish love – still hoping. But there was nothing to hope. It was not in her power to conceive what I was. I was battered and scarred by fights she had never imagined, disillusioned of dreams she had never dreamed. I had left the village years ago – irrevocably. She would have been utterly lost in my world. At last, rather mournfully, I said "good night."

The next day the Father was on the porch when I came down. He greeted me with a sort of wistful expectancy in his eyes. And my cordial "good morning" did not seem to satisfy him. I did not understand until at breakfast.

"My son," he said, "I have often wished – it would have made me very happy – if you had married Margot." So he at least had hoped that this would be the result of my home-coming.

"She's a rare girl," he said, "a fine spirit. A good wife is a great help to a man in leading an upright life. A pillar of strength."

"The fates have denied me that help," I said. And I did not realize till too late the pagan form I had given my words.

But the match had been lighted. The Father did not believe that any good could come to a man except from the religion of Christ. Try as hard as I might I could not prevent the conversation from taking that turn. If he had loved me less we might have been better friends. But the only thing which mattered to him was the salvation of souls. And in proportion to his love for me he must needs seek my conversion. On the one point where we could not agree, his very affection made him insistent.

We both tried very hard to be sweet tempered about it. But I was in a difficult position. If I did not try to answer his arguments he thought I was convinced but unwilling to admit it. If I argued, it angered him. He would lose his temper and then be very apologetic about it. For an hour or so we would talk pleasantly of other things. Then inevitably the conversation would swing back to the subject he cared most about. After supper he at last brought things to a pass from which there was but one escape.

"My son," he said, "the day after to-morrow is the first Sunday in the month – Communion Sunday. You are still a member of my church, you have never asked to be relieved of the solemn responsibilities you took when you united with us. Will you join the rest of the members at the communion table?"

"I'm sorry, Father," I said, my heart suddenly hardening at the memory of the way I had been pushed into church membership. "I'll have to leave to-morrow night. I must be back at work early next week."

I had expected to stay longer. But for me to have gone to church and refused communion, would have been almost an insult to him. To have pretended to a faith I did not have, seemed to me a worse sort of a lie than the one I used. And so – having been home but two nights – I returned to the city and work.