Part 17 (1/2)

Tell me, do you feel strong enough to go in next door and attend the trustees' meeting this forenoon? It's rather important that you should be there, if you can spur yourself up to it. By the way, you haven't asked what happened at the Quarterly Conference yesterday.”

Theron sighed, and made a little grimace of repugnance. ”If you knew how little I cared!” he said. ”I did hope you'd forget all about mentioning that--and everything else connected with--the next door. You talk so much more interestingly about other things.”

”Here's grat.i.tude for you!” exclaimed Sister Soulsby, with a gay simulation of despair. ”Why, man alive, do you know what I've done for you? I got around on the Presiding Elder's blind side, I captured old Pierce, I wound Winch right around my little finger, I worked two or three of the cla.s.s-leaders--all on your account. The result was you went through as if you'd had your ears pinned back, and been greased all over. You've got an extra hundred dollars added to your salary; do you hear? On the sixth question of the order of business the Elder ruled that the recommendation of the last conference's estimating committee could be revised (between ourselves he was wrong, but that doesn't matter), and so you're in clover. And very friendly things were said about you, too.”

”It was very kind of you,” said Theron. ”I am really extremely grateful to you.” He shook her by the hand to make up for what he realized to be a lack of fervor in his tones.

”Well, then,” Sister Soulsby replied, ”you pull yourself together, and take your place as chairman of the trustees' meeting, and see to it that, whatever comes up, you side with old Pierce and Winch.”

”Oh, THEY'RE my friends now, are they?” asked Theron, with a faint play of irony about his lips.

”Yes, that's your ticket this election,” she answered briskly, ”and mind you vote it straight. Don't bother about reasons now. Just take it from me, as the song says, 'that things have changed since Willie died.'

That's all. And then come back here, and this afternoon we'll have a good old-fas.h.i.+oned jaw.”

The Rev. Mr. Ware, walking with ostentatious feebleness, and forcing a conventional smile upon his wan face, duly made his unexpected appearance at the trustees' meeting in one of the smaller cla.s.srooms. He received their congratulations gravely, and shook hands with all three.

It required an effort to do this impartially, because, upon sight of Levi Gorringe, there rose up suddenly within him an emotion of fierce dislike and enmity. In some enigmatic way his thoughts had kept themselves away from Gorringe ever since Sunday evening. Now they concentrated with furious energy and swiftness upon him. Theron seemed able in a flash of time to coordinate many recollections of Gorringe--the early liking Alice had professed for him, the mystery of those purchased plants in her garden, the story of the girl he had lost in church, his offer to lend him money, the way in which he had sat beside Alice at the love-feast and followed her to the altar-rail in the evening. These raced abreast through the young minister's brain, yet with each its own image, and its relation to the others clearly defined.

He found the nerve, all the same, to take this third trustee by the hand, and to thank him for his congratulations, and even to say, with a surface smile of welcome, ”It is BROTHER Gorringe, now, I remember.”

The work before the meeting was chiefly of a routine kind. In most places this would have been transacted by the stewards; but in Octavius these minor officials had degenerated into mere ceremonial abstractions, who humbly ratified, or by arrangement antic.i.p.ated, the will of the powerful, mortgage-owning trustees. Theron sat languidly at the head of the table while these common-place matters pa.s.sed in their course, noting the intonations of Gorringe's voice as he read from his secretary's book, and finding his ear displeased by them. No issue arose upon any of these trivial affairs, and the minister, feeling faint and weary in the heat, wondered why Sister Soulsby had insisted on his coming.

All at once he sat up straight, with an instinctive warning in his mind that here was the thing. Gorringe had taken up the subject of the ”debt-raising” evening, and read out its essentials as they had been embodied in a report of the stewards. The gross sum obtained, in cash and promises, was $1,860. The stewards had collected of this a trifle less than half, but hoped to get it all in during the ensuing quarter.

There were, also, the bill of Mr. and Mrs. Soulsby for $150, and the increases of $100 in the pastor's salary and $25 in the apportioned contribution of the charge toward the Presiding Elder's maintenance, the two latter items of which the Quarterly Conference had sanctioned.

”I want to hear the names of the subscribers and their amounts read out,” put in Brother Pierce.

When this was done, it became apparent that much more than half of the entire amount had been offered by two men. Levi Gorringe's $450 and Erastus Winch's $425 left only $985 to be divided up among some seventy or eighty other members of the congregation.

Brother Pierce speedily stopped the reading of these subordinate names.

”They're of no concern whatever,” he said, despite the fact that his own might have been reached in time. ”Those first names are what I was getting at. Have those two first amounts, the big ones, be'n paid?”

”One has--the other not,” replied Gorringe.

”PRE-cisely,” remarked the senior trustee. ”And I'm goin' to move that it needn't be paid, either. When Brother Winch, here, began hollerin'

out those extra twenty-fives and fifties, that evening, it was under a complete misapprehension. He'd be'n on the Cheese Board that same Monday afternoon, and he'd done what he thought was a mighty big stroke of business, and he felt liberal according. I know just what that feelin'

is myself. If I'd be'n makin' a mint o' money, instead o' losin' all the while, as I do, I'd 'a' done just the same. But the next day, lo, and behold, Brother Winch found that it was all a mistake--he hadn't made a single penny.”

”Fact is, I lost by the whole transaction,” put in Erastus Winch, defiantly.

”Just so,” Brother Pierce went on. ”He lost money. You have his own word for it. Well, then, I say it would be a burning shame for us to consent to touch one penny of what he offered to give, in the fullness of his heart, while he was laborin' under that delusion. And I move he be not asked for it. We've got quite as much as we need, without it. I put my motion.”

”That is, YOU don't put it,” suggested Winch, correctingly. ”You move it, and Brother Ware, whom we're all so glad to see able to come and preside--he'll put it.”

There was a moment's silence. ”You've heard the motion,” said Theron, tentatively, and then paused for possible remarks. He was not going to meddle in this thing himself, and Gorringe was the only other who might have an opinion to offer. The necessities of the situation forced him to glance at the lawyer inquiringly. He did so, and turned his eyes away again like a shot. Gorringe was looking him squarely in the face, and the look was freighted with satirical contempt.

The young minister spoke between clinched teeth. ”All those in favor will say aye.”