Part 76 (1/2)
”What I am getting at is this. You have made a mess of the affairs of St. John's, you have made a mess of your life. I am willing to give you the credit for sincerity. Some of my friends might not be. You want to marry my daughter, and she is apparently determined to marry you. If you are sensible and resign from St. John's now I will settle on Alison a sufficient sum to allow you both to live in comfort and decency the rest of your lives. I will not have it said of me that I permitted my daughter to become dest.i.tute.”
After he had finished, the rector sat for so long a time that the banker nervously s.h.i.+fted in his chair. The clergyman's look had a c.u.mulative quality, an intensity which seemed to increase as the silence continued.
There was no anger in it, no fanaticism. On the contrary, the higher sanity of it was disturbing; and its extraordinary implication--gradually borne in upon Eldon Parr--was that he himself were not in his right mind. The words, when they came, were a confirmation of this inference.
”It is what I feared, Mr. Parr,” he said. ”You are as yet incapable of comprehending.”
”What do you mean?” asked the banker, jerking his hand from the table.
The rector shook his head.
”If this great chastis.e.m.e.nt with which you have been visited has given you no hint of the true meaning of life, nothing I can say will avail.
If you will not yet listen to the Spirit which is trying to make you comprehend, how then will you listen to me? How am I to open your eyes to the paradox of truth, that he who would save his life shall lose it, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of G.o.d? If you will not believe him who said that, you will not believe me. I can only beg of you, strive to understand, that your heart many be softened, that your suffering soul may be released.”
It is to be recorded, strangely, that Eldon Parr did not grow angry in his turn. The burning eyes looked out at Hodder curiously, as at a being upon whom the vials of wrath were somehow wasted, against whom the weapons of power were of no account. The fanatic had become a phenomenon which had momentarily stilled pa.s.sion to arouse interest... ”Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?”
”Do you mean to say”--such was the question that sprang to Eldon Parr's lips--”that you take the Bible literally? What is your point of view?
You speak about the salvation of souls, I have heard that kind of talk all my life. And it is easy, I find, for men who have never known the responsibilities of wealth to criticize and advise. I regard indiscriminate giving as nothing less than a crime, and I have always tried to be painstaking and judicious. If I had taken the words you quoted at their face value, I should have no wealth to distribute to-day.
”I, too, Mr. Hodder, odd as it may seem to you, have had my dreams--of doing my share of making this country the best place in the world to live in. It has pleased providence to take away my son. He was not fitted to carry on my work,--that is the way--with dreams. I was to have taught him to build up, and to give, as I have given. You think me embittered, hard, because I seek to do good, to interpret the Gospel in my own way. Before this year is out I shall have retired from all active business.
”I intend to spend the rest of my life in giving away the money I have earned--all of it. I do not intend to spare myself, and giving will be harder than earning. I shall found inst.i.tutions for research of disease, hospitals, playgrounds, libraries, and schools. And I shall make the university here one of the best in the country. What more, may I ask, would you have me do?”
”Ah,” replied the rector, ”it is not what I would have you do. It is not, indeed, a question of 'doing,' but of seeing.”
”Of seeing?” the banker repeated. ”As I say, of using judgment.”
”Judgment, yes, but the judgment which has not yet dawned for you, the enlightenment which is the knowledge of G.o.d's will. Worldly wisdom is a rule of thumb many men may acquire, the other wisdom, the wisdom of the soul, is personal--the reward of revelation which springs from desire.
You ask me what I think you should do. I will tell you--but you will not do it, you will be powerless to do it unless you see it for yourself, unless the time shall come when you are willing to give up everything you have held dear in life,--not your money, but your opinions, the very judgment and wisdom you value, until you have gained the faith which proclaims these worthless, until you are ready to receive the Kingdom of G.o.d as a little child. You are not ready, now. Your att.i.tude, your very words, proclaim your blindness to all that has happened you, your determination to carry out, so far as it is left to you, your own will.
You may die without seeing.”
Crazy as it all sounded, a slight tremor shook Eldon Parr. There was something in the eyes, in the powerful features of the clergyman that kept him still, that made him listen with a fascination which had he taken cognizance of it--was akin to fear. That this man believed it, that he would impress it upon others, nay, had already done so, the banker did not then doubt.
”You speak of giving,” Hodder continued, ”and you have nothing to give--nothing. You are poorer to-day than the humblest man who has seen G.o.d. But you have much, you have all to restore.” Without raising his voice, the rector had contrived to put a mighty emphasis on the word.
”You speak of the labour of giving, but if you seek your G.o.d and haply find him you will not rest night or day while you live until you have restored every dollar possible of that which you have wrongfully taken from others.”
John Hodder rose and raised his arm in effective protest against the interruption Eldon Parr was about to make. He bore him down.
”I know what you are going to say, Mr. Parr,--that it is not practical.
That word 'practical' is the barrier between you and your G.o.d. I tell you that G.o.d can make anything practical. Your conscience, the spirit, tortures you to-day, but you have not had enough torture, you still think to escape easily, to keep the sympathy of a world which despises you. You are afraid to do what G.o.d would have you do. You have the opportunity, through grace, by your example to leave the world better than you found it, to do a thing of such magnitude as is given to few men, to confess before all that your life has been blind and wicked.
That is what the Spirit is trying to teach you. But you fear the ridicule of the other blind men, you have not the faith to believe that many eyes would be opened by your act. The very shame of such a confession, you think, is not to be borne.”
”Suppose I acknowledge, which I do not, your preposterous charge, how would you propose to do this thing?”
”It is very simple,” said the rector, ”so far as the actual method of procedure goes. You have only to establish a board of men in whom you have confidence,--a court of claims, so to speak,--to pa.s.s upon the validity of every application, not from a business standpoint alone, but from one of a broad justice and equity. And not only that. I should have it an important part of the duties of this board to discover for themselves other claimants who may not, for various reasons, come forward. In the case of the Consolidated Tractions, for instances there are doubtless many men like Garvin who invested their savings largely on the strength of your name. You cannot bring him back to life, restore him to his family as he was before you embittered him, but it would be a comparatively easy matter to return to his widow, with compound interest, the sum which he invested.”
”For the sake of argument,” said Eldon Parr, ”what would you do with the innumerable impostors who would overwhelm such a board with claims that they had bought and sold stock at a loss? And that is only one case I could mention.”
”Would it be so dreadful a thing,” asked Hodder, ”To run the risk of making a few mistakes? It would not be business, you say. If you had the desire to do this, you would dismiss such an obsession from your brain, you would prefer to err on the aide of justice and mercy. And no matter how able your board, in making rest.i.tution you could at best expect to mend only a fraction of the wrongs you have done.”