Part 3 (2/2)

Recast your heartless creeds! Your theories for the poor are built on these.”

She sank back into her chair white and exhausted.

There was a wild burst of applause. A part of the audience, with that ear for sound and that lack of sense to be found in all such gatherings, had forgotten that it was not listening to a burst of eloquence which had been duly written out and committed to memory for the occasion.

But Roland Barker sprang to his feet, held both his hands up, to command silence, and said, in a scarcely audible voice, as he trembled from head to foot: ”Hush, hus.h.!.+ She has told the truth! She has told the awful truth! I never saw it all before. Heaven help you to bear it. It seems to me I cannot!”

Several were pale and weeping. I turned to speak to the woman who had changed an evening's entertainment into a tragic scene; but she had slipped out during the excitement. I took Barker's arm and we walked towards the Avenue together. Neither of us spoke until we reached Madison Square. Here the poor fellow sank into a seat and pulled me down beside him.

”Don't talk to me about theories after that,” he said. ”Great G.o.d! I am more dead than alive. I feel fifty years older than when I went to that little hall to teach those people how to live by my fine philosophy, and I truly thought that I had tasted sorrow and found the key to resignation. Ye G.o.ds!”

”Perhaps you have,” I said.

”Yes, yes,” he replied, impatiently; ”but suppose I had to face life day by day, hour by hour, as that woman pictured it--and she was a lady with as keen a sense of pain as I--what do you suppose my philosophy would do for me then? Do you think I could endure it? And I went there to teach those people how to suffer and be strong!”

”Look here, Barker,” I said, ”you'd better go home now and go to bed.

You are cold and tired, and this won't help matters any.”

”What will?” he asked.

I made no reply. When we reached his door he asked again:

”What will?”

I shook my head and left him standing in the brilliant hall of his beautiful home, dazed and puzzled and alone.

II.

The next time I met Roland Barker he grasped my hand and said excitedly: ”I have found that woman! What she said is all true. My G.o.d! what is to be done? I feel like a strong man tied hand and foot, while devilish vultures feed on the flesh of living babes before my eyes!”

”Stop, Barker,” I said; ”stop, and go away for a while, or you will go mad. What have you been doing? Look at your hands; they tremble like the hands of a palsied man; and your face; why, Barker, your face is haggard and set, and your hair is actually turning gray! What in the name of all that's holy have you been doing?”

”Nothing, absolutely nothing!” he exclaimed ”That is the trouble!

What _can_ I do? I tell you something is wrong, Gordon, something is desperately wrong in this world. Look at that pile of stone over there: millions of dollars are built into that. It is opened once each week, aired, cleaned, and put in order for a fas.h.i.+onable audience dressed in silk and broadcloth. They call it a church, but it is simply a popular club house, which, unlike other club houses, hasn't the grace to pay its own taxes. They use that club house, let us say, three hours in all, each week, for what? To listen to elaborate music and fine-spun theories about another world. They are asked to, and they give money to send these same theories to nations far away, who--to put it mildly--are quite as well off without them. Then that house is closed for a week, and those who sat there really believe that they have done what is right by their fellow-men! Their natural consciences, their sense of right and justice, have been given an anaesthetic. 'The poor ye have with you always,' they are taught to believe, is not only true, but _right_. I tell you, Gordon, it is all perfectly d.a.m.nable, and it seems to me that I cannot bear it when I remember that woman.”

”She is only one of a great many,” I suggested.

Roland Barker groaned: ”My G.o.d! that is the trouble--so many that the thing seems hopeless. And to think that on every one of even these poor souls is laid another burden that that stone spire may go untaxed!”

”Barker,” I said, laying my hand on his arm, ”tell me what has forced all this upon you with such a terrible weight just now.”

”Not here, not now,” he said. ”I have written it down just as she told it to me--you know I learned stenography when I began taking an interest in public meetings. Well, I've just been copying those notes out. They are in my pocket,” he said, laying his hand on his breast. ”They seem to burn my very soul. I would not dare to trust myself to read them to you here. Come home with me.”

When we were seated in his magnificent library, he glanced about him, and with a wave of his hand said, with infinite satire: ”You will notice the striking appropriateness of the surroundings and the subject.”

”No doubt,” I said. ”I have often noticed that before, especially the last time I heard a sermon preached to three of the Vanderbilts, two Astors, five other millionaires, and about sixty more consistent Christians, all of whom were wealthy. The subject was Christ's advice to the rich young man, 'Sell all thou hast and give to the poor.' But never mind; go on; the day has pa.s.sed when deed and creed are supposed to hold the slightest relation to each other; and what is a $20,000 salary for if not to buy sufficient ability to explain it all sweetly away and administer, at the same time, an anaesthetic to the natural consciences of men?”

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