Far down in the offices on the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper, everything was going on as usual. Only one room of the suite was empty, and even in it, under the solemn Washington, the stock-ticker was weaving out its yards and yards of tape by the windows that looked to the web of streets on which the people buzzed always like entangled flies.CHAPTER XVI§1. Public opinion had been unanimous concerning Luke's break with the Municipal Reform League. Only in the terms of their condemnation did the newspapers differ: they were all agreed that Luke was anathema. His letters to the press served him to small purpose; the Executive Committee issued a statement declaring that his withdrawal had been requested "because of inflammatory utterances and practical policies contrary to the spirit and purpose of the organization." The official statement was accepted and his individual version treated as a futile attempt to blacken a reputable, if mistaken, movement. It was everywhere believed that he had been forced to resign because of his Cooper Union speech, and it was in some quarters hinted that his former comrades held him responsible for the attempt to bribe the Heney lieutenant—a scandal made the most of during the subsequent period of the campaign and thereafter dropped before it reached the courts. In spite of the fact that the Committee had met in secret session, some of its members gave their own story of its turbulent dénouement to the reporters, and this was published in a form that made Luke appear as a cornered bully."Mr. Huber [said the most dignified editorial on the subject] was once doubtless a well-intentioned young man, but his first taste of popular applause seems to have intoxicated him, made him see visions of one real evil in every impossible quarter and caused a fit of that acute mania wherein one's best friends are mistaken for one's worst enemies. This is the only charitable explanation of the tragic end to a promising career, but on that end the Municipal Reform League is certainly to be congratulated."Other editorials laughed at Luke's habit of hitting at vast conspiracies of which he never produced proof, and some charged him with flagrant dishonesty. He reverted for a time to his belief in publicity and bombarded the papers with letters of explanation; but the papers at first garbled and then forgot to print what he wrote. He sent for reporters to give them interviews, but, although the men still liked him, and politely took down his every word, they could never get their "copy" beyond the editorial desks. Within a few days, the former candidate was a newspaper joke.He had, of course, written to his mother and sister about his engagement to Betty, since publicly announced, and they had replied with kindly letters, glad because of his planned marriage to the daughter of a man of good family supposed to be well-to-do, and hopeful for his continued happiness. Now, with the news of his political overthrow published broadcast, Jane wrote to ask him why he had been so foolish and to quote her husband the Congressman, to the effect that what Luke needed was an apprenticeship at practical politics; his mother's comment was one of love triumphant over the defects of the loved object and forgiveness for behavior inexplicable in his father's son.The strike dragged on wearily. After the first outbreak of violence, the leaders were able, for a time, to prevail upon the strikers to use more peaceable methods; but the resulting days of siege were as trying for both sides as the active warfare had been. Forbes's boasts to the contrary notwithstanding, the firm, handicapped by the unskilled labor of the strike-breakers, found itself unable to fulfil its contracts; the new recruits were all raw men, whereas much of the factory's work was intended for trained women: badly needed money was being forfeited. The dispossessed employees, on the other hand, rapidly exhausted their own supplies; because they had gone over to industrial unionism, the American Federation of Labor, to which their old "local" had been attached through the trade-union that it was a part of, refused help and forbade the union to give any; there had been a national reaction against the I.W.W., and it could furnish but little money. The strikers held angry meetings and faced starvation; Luke and Forbes met in long conferences and faced ruin.In those days, only Luke's love for Betty sustained him, and Betty, being new to both love and disaster, remained loyal. She was confident that the politicians and the papers were conspiring against him, and, knowing her father's gentleness in his home, she was equally confident that the strikers were wrong.Luke did not inquire as to the reasons of her steadfastness. In the first darkness of disaster, he was too glad for support to quarrel with its origin. She was warm and human, sympathetic and at hand; she loved him. With all his heart and soul, he returned her love. In the last analysis, he fought, he told himself, for an ideal that, if greater than them both or separately, was yet necessary to them. The ideal had an undeniable lien upon the best of his strength of body and mind; yet whatever of these the ideal could spare was not for him, but for Betty.Then came the death of the man whom Luke had regarded as the personification of the evils from which the country was suffering. It came close enough upon the Cooper Union speech to make that speech appear in the worst possible taste; but it was an event considered of such tremendous importance in itself that Luke was forgotten and once for all swept from the columns of the newspapers.Those papers, even the daring few that had once or twice had the temerity feebly to question the lesser schemes of the man who now pursued no more schemes, were crowded with reverential accounts of his illness, awed pictures of his last moments, laudatory descriptions of his Napoleonic career, and editorials that spoke only of his undeniable greatness and his outstanding benefactions. The country talked as if its king had died; the achievements of none of the three presidents killed while in office had received louder praise or more lengthy attention. He left two large fortunes to individuals: one to the niece to whom Yeates was engaged, and one to be divided among more distant relatives, with bequests to faithful servants in his house and businesses; but the bulk of his money went to the colleges and hospitals that he had so magnificently assisted during his life. Firmly, the entire press observed the Latin maxim: they let nothing but good be spoken of the dead.Luke was by this time prepared for such an attitude on the part of the papers, but, on his own part, he permitted no illusions. The fact of death must always be solemn; but the force that ended wrong-doing did not palliate it. This blow was like a judgment from Heaven. Luke did not think so much of how it would benefit him as of how it would benefit the country, but he was of too common clay not to spare some reflection to the influence of the event upon his own affairs: it would probably mean the dissolution of the antagonism to him in business; it would surely mean the cessation of the personal persecution that had already wrecked his political and professional career. Yet it was more for the triumph of the larger and broader good that he felt ready to chant aJubilate.Once the thoughts crossed his mind: If Heaven were just, and this death were indeed Heaven's judgment, why had Heaven's judgment been so long delayed? And, since Heaven had been tardy when the death of a single man could thus ease the world and make for social righteousness, how could he have held it wrong had some sufferer from that evil struck, in Heaven's default, this single blow for the freedom of society? But he was in no mood to front casuistry: the thing had happened, and that was happiness enough.He was reading the news in his rooms at the Arapahoe. He had sat up late with Forbes the night before and had risen late this morning, breakfasting in the apartment house. He knew that he ought to go to the factory, but he could not go at once.He began again to dream dreams as he used to dream them. His personal failure counted for nothing in what must happen now. Suppose he were discredited and unable to win back the public confidence: somebody, without party and without politics, a larger and better man than he had been, would assume a national leadership, where his had been small and local, and would now bring the whole country back to the simple political faith and the plain, honest financial and industrial policies of the nation's founders. The mercenaries of darkness that had served the evil mind could not now, with the evil mind in perdition, stand for one day against the Army of Light.Himself? He would begin over again, with Betty and for her. In the new order, under the reign of equity, public opinion would soon clarify, and he could re-establish himself and perform some part, however small, of the mighty work of reconstruction. He had been too busy of late with love and politics and business to continue in the social life in which Jack Porcellis had launched him. Porcellis's sporadic returns to New York—the man was just now in India on the pretense of studying its religions—were, latterly, Luke's sole occasions of approaching that existence. Save to secure the loan, he now contritely recalled, he had neglected Ruysdael, whose agent as yet evinced no misgivings over the effect of the strike upon Forbes's securities, and on his last incursions into Mrs. Ruysdael's set, though Luke had found himself liked, he was made aware that the liking for his small-talk was severely tempered by scorn for his enthusiasms. He must overcome all that now. To be of use, to help Betty, he must regain.When he was a small boy, his ambition in life had been carpentry. At some remote time or other, he must have seen and admired one of those journeymen joiners of the elder type that used to tramp the country roads from small town to town and keep alive by doing odd jobs at the houses on their endless way. He loved tools and he loved wandering; even yet he loved them, and this figure had once represented Romance to him as definitely as the dead man in russet brown, long afterward, represented Evil. This morning, while he smiled at the memory of those young imaginings, Luke felt a little of their charm: it seemed impossible for him to form, as he should, his new plans while he sat in an apartment house in the city in which his plans must eventually be applied; he wished that he could drop everything for the day and go somewhere far out into the country to tramp the dusty roads and dream at ease.It was then that the telephone announced a caller: ex-Judge Stein.§2. The Judge, as he entered, presented the same dignified figure that he had presented when Luke last talked with him. His strong face was solemn, but undisturbed by its solemnity. He arranged with care the tails of his frock-coat as he seated himself in the best chair, but on this occasion he came directly to the point of his visit."Mr. Huber," he said, "a great many things have happened since we met."Luke shrugged his shoulders."I'll admit you've kept me pretty busy, Judge.""I was not referring to the unnecessary trouble in which you involved yourself. I was referring to the fact that your month has elapsed and that the man you threatened is dead."The news of the morning had temporarily annulled Luke's sense of time. Only yesterday he had wondered what use he should make of the Rollins letters, now carried in a safer place than his coat-pocket; to-day he had forgotten them."Yes," he said, gathering his thoughts behind his impassive face: "the month's over and the man's dead."The Judge leaned impressively forward. He shook his white head gravely."Death," said the Judge, "wipes out all animosities. I know you would not use those letters now, Mr. Huber, because I know you would not strike a dead man. So I have come to ask you to deliver them to me." He held out his opened hand.Luke blinked at it."I don't understand," said he. "I thought you always represented yourself as—well, as not professionally retained in this matter?""I am now," said the Judge."Oh! By the estate?""Not directly and not altogether." Stein chose his words. "I am retained by the company whose property those letters are.""I thought you had left the railroad-claim business long ago. Perhaps you are specially retained for this one job?"The Judge looked hurt. His firm mouth quivered."Mr. Huber," he said, "I am in no frame of mind for joking to-day. This man is dead, and he was my friend——""I'm sorry to have seemed to joke," Luke interrupted.Stein bowed and went on:"He is dead, and whatever his faults—we all have our faults, Mr. Huber—they died with him. I am here only to ask you to show a decent respect for the memory of a dead enemy. I am here to ask you to be magnanimous, Mr. Huber.""Magnanimous? You talk as if I had won!""The living are always the winners," said the Judge.Luke began to doubt that theory."And so you want me to surrender these letters?""Exactly. What use can they be to you now?""There were other people involved. Are they willing to accept my terms? I know they can't hurt me, because I know they haven't the courage or the power of the man you've been talking about. But that's neither here nor there: will they accept my terms?""They did not write either of the letters, Mr. Huber.""They're inculpated by them.""Not legally.""Enough inculpated to serve my purpose.""If you think that," said the Judge, "I can only repeat the offer I made you when I called here before."Luke smiled."And I can only refuse it.""Mr. Huber," the Judge began again, "the man is dead——"Luke's nerves had been strained for many a day. He leaped to his feet."Of course the man's dead!" he cried. "He was dead this morning, and he's still dead. Why do you keep saying that over and over? I'm tired of hearing it." He saw the look of pain return. "I beg your pardon," he said; "but I might as well tell you first and last that I won't surrender those letters, no matter what you plead or threaten. I won't tell you what I intend to do with them, either. And the only reason I know that they must be of use to me is your coming here and saying they aren't any use."The Judge rose also."Mr. Huber," said he, "I am very sorry to hear you speak this way. I can't tell you how sorry I am. You ought to know by this time——""I couldn't know anything," Luke cut in, "that would make me change my mind.""But suppose," said the Judge heavily, "suppose my friends happen to know that the situation of the Forbes Company——"Luke's face went very white.He opened the door."Good-morning, Judge," he said.§3. Stein's polite, but portentous adieux were not a quarter of an hour old before Luke sought the office of the newspaper that had been the last to refuse him space in its columns for his political explanations. The man that was dead had, it seemed, left a something of his influence behind him: Luke resolved to strike at it.The office-boy was a long time returning, and, when he did, it was to announce:"He says ter find out whatcher want.""Give me my card," said Luke.He scribbled on the card: "Non-political.""Now," he said, "try him again."§4. The editor was one of those men whom newspaper-work so affects that they look any age between thirty and fifty. His nervous face was full of tense lines, and every few minutes his mouth twitched.Luke told his story and showed the letters. The editor read them."Why do you want to do this?" he asked."Why?" Luke was amazed. "Because I want to protect the public.""Then you'd better go to the M. & N. railroad.""But you know they wouldn't do anything. They've promised before.""I can't believe that," said the editor."I know it," said Luke."I can't believe it. You have always been too sudden, Mr. Huber—if you'll pardon my saying so. At any rate, we can't print these things." He returned the letters. "After all, the man's dead, you know.""What's that got to do with it?" Luke's voice rose in reply to the hated phrase. "I want to keep some other people from dying."The editor picked up a proof-sheet and began to read it."It would be bad taste for us to print that, just now," he said. "Come around in a couple of weeks, and we may think about it. Why, the body's hardly cold yet."§5. As Forbes had once gone from bank to bank, Luke went that morning from newspaper-office to newspaper-office. Yet there was this difference: that, whereas Forbes had only tried a few banks, Luke tried a dozen newspaper-offices. His search included the papers notoriously controlled by the money or the advertising of the power that opposed him; he even tried some of those journals of the city which are printed in foreign tongues, and he tried the radical press. He tried all in vain.Most of the editors were men that had fought him when he was the candidate of the Municipal Reform League; some that he sought were of those who had tired of him when he pestered them with explanations of his political overthrow. Many refused to see him; one or two pronounced him mad. The radicals shared the view of the man with whom he first spoke: they would not be guilty of bad taste. Wherever he got word with a person in authority, the word was the same; he met with that all-sufficient argument:"After all, the man's dead."§6. When, finally, he acknowledged defeat, his wearied nerves manifested their condition through deep physical exhaustion. He could not front the thought of passing the remainder of the day at the factory; could not go at once from one losing fight to another. However much he might be needed, he could not do it. Until he had rested, he would be useless, and worse than useless.He did not go back to the Arapahoe. Instead, with the open country calling him, he went to the Grand Central Station and took a train into Connecticut.The day was Saturday, and the cars were filled with released workers, but Luke avoided them by going far and descending at the least important of the train's stops. Tired though he was, he walked beyond the little town. He cut across fields to a hill crowned by a clump of trees and there, in the shade, threw himself on the ground and lay for hours thinking of nothing and looking at white clouds sailing across a blue sky. He wished that he could lie here forever....It was one o'clock in the morning before he returned to his rooms. It was far too late to reply to the score of telephone-calls that, he was told, Forbes had made on him.Luke remembered that he had promised Betty to go with her to service at Nicholson's church.§7. He was strengthened by his brief rest, and he went to Betty with a heart renewed."Father's still asleep," she said, as she met him in the hall of the Forbes house, her gloved fingers busied with her hair, preventing the escape of one of the yellow wire pins that held the few strands too short for her pins of tortoise-shell. "He wanted to be called, but he was so tired out, I told the maid not to disturb him. He sat up ever so late, waiting for you. Where were you, Luke?"Luke had rarely seen her looking better. The Sunday calm had erased all the tokens of the recent trying days from her face: it was rosy and young; it was appealingly almost childish. The morning sun was in her hair; her brown eyes were wide and bright. He did not want to spoil her by the story of his yesterday's defeat, and so he passed it by with some facile excuses for his absence from the factory."We're late," he said, as he helped her into the Forbes motor-car.The chauffeur ran close to the speed-laws all the way to Manhattan. They reached their journey's end immediately after the choir had taken its position in the chancel.The ritualistic church of St. Athanasius is one of the handsomest in New York. It was built in close imitation of Beverley Minster, and so elaborate was the work done upon it that, in spite of its wealthy congregation's assistance, it still staggered under the load of a heavy debt. It has the Yorkshire building's two Early English transepts, Perpendicular towers, and a Late Decorated nave with flying and pinnacled buttresses. Inside, as Luke and Betty entered it, the warmly-colored light fell through many Lancet windows on the crowd of fashionable worshipers kneeling before narrow chairs. Nicholson's voice, coming from behind the choir-screen, sounded clear but far away.Luke and Betty walked up the nearest aisle and took the seats assigned to the Forbes family, close to the carved pulpit and under the triforium. The high arches were carried on clustered pillars, and, down the perspective of the nave, Luke could see into the choir, to the Decorated reredos, where, as in Beverley, the piers increased in size by successive groups of shafts that projected like corbels. He knelt beside her and tried to give his mind to the service; but his eyes, familiar though they were with the church, wandered to the north aisle's windows and the ogee and foliated arcade under them, to the people in front of him, and so, inevitably, to the girl at his side.The service proceeded. The people said the Lord's Prayer; Nicholson recited the collect, and then read the Ten Commandments of Moses, the congregation responding."Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law."After the creed, Nicholson walked to the pulpit. He climbed its steps, and for a few moments only his clasped hands were visible as he knelt inside. Then rising, he took his stole from the pulpit rail, kissed the cross embroidered at the top of the stole, and put it on."In the Book of Ecclesiastes," he began, "in the ninth chapter and the second verse, it is written:"'All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not.'"Nicholson's face was earnest. It was at once stern and irradiated, the face of an ascetic turned seer."And in the General Epistle of St. James," he proceeded, "in the second chapter and the twenty-second verse:"'Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?'"Nicholson spoke without notes, but without hesitation."A great man," he said, "has just died. We have heard evil report of him, and good report. We have heard whispers against him, and we have seen good that he has done; but his greatness no man questioned. To-day he has passed to his last account. To-day the dead man stands before his Eternal Judge. One of those events that happen to the rich and poor alike has happened to him. With what he has done that is over, the Court of Heaven now alone, in all its boundless mercy, has to deal. We that remain here on earth may not judge of that. We that remain on earth must consider the things that he has done and are not over, the things he has left behind; we must concern ourselves only with what concerns us; it is our duty to remember him by the works that he has made his monument."The preacher dwelt upon the dead man's rise from poverty to vast riches, a hopeful lesson in the reward of thrift and wisdom to every poor boy in a republic that grants equal opportunity to all. He spoke with an admiration of the genius that had carved its way to power until its will was felt in the uttermost corners of the earth.As he proceeded, Nicholson seemed to forget his admonition against the judgment of things over and done with. He made direct reference to Luke's Cooper Union speech, and he looked full in Luke's face as he made it."Not long ago," he said, "while this man was tottering upon the brink of eternity, another man, a sincere, but misguided man, made terrible charges against him, charges that reflected, however veiled, upon the character and motives not only of the man now dead, but a whole group of people eminent in public and business life. And what was the result? Nothing that lent the least credit to the accuser's intelligence or appreciation of the value of evidence, for nothing at all was proven, nothing even corroborated."Luke flushed. He felt Betty looking at him, but he would not return her gaze. He felt other people in the congregation turned toward him. He could not guess what had changed Nicholson.The sermon was proceeding with praises of the dead man's benefactions. One by one they were described and extolled."His greatness," said Nicholson, "would have availed him nothing at this one event for the righteous and the wicked if he had not had charity, for we are told that though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, we are become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Charity, however, this man had. The institutions that he supported and has endowed have given and now forever will give learning to thousands who, but for them, would have lived in ignorance—healing to thousands who, but for them, would have died in agony."Charity: but charity alone will not suffice. Sounding brass itself, unless it is informed by faith! And this man's sublime faith even his worst enemy cannot deny. For his counsel and advice, for his painstaking and sagacious investment of its funds the Church is indebted to this man as it is to no other. Many a denomination outside our own fold can truly say the same of him and should say and does say how much we owe him, also, for the unceasing flow of his money into our treasuries. He did not speak of these things. He did not let his right hand know what his left hand did; but we of the Church remember that he gave millions of dollars to the faith."The faith of men of money is tested by their money; yet this man's faith had many another test and rose triumphant from them all. His attendance at the Church's services—not only on Sundays, but on fast-days and holidays, on saints'-days and work-days—never failed. His wisdom was free to our councils, and I have been told on reliable authority that he never rose in the morning, went to bed at night, or embarked on any business enterprise, however small, without first humbly and privately asking direction of the Most High. He knew in his every act that the greatest man is as nothing before God; and when he came to die, he died like a Christian, a priest of God by his side and the words of God's mercy sounding in his dulling ears. From first to last, his works and his faith were one: 'Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?' For us who are Christians, that is enough. It is enough to make us each pray to meet his end, each at his own station in life, as this great man met his.De mortuis nil nisi bonum."Only amazement had held Luke in his chair. At this phrase, he half rose.Nicholson, however, was concluding:"There is but one word more, a word personal to us of this congregation, to be said. I need not recall to you the heavy privations that this church in which we now are has undergone. They were generously met and nobly borne, but, in spite of all your nobility and all your generosity, the time came, a week since, when it seemed indeed as if the forces of evil were about to conquer, and as if, unless Heaven intervened, this beautiful building must pass out of our hands."Three days before the death of the man I have been speaking of this morning, an impulse came to me, and I wrote him a letter. My friends, I do not believe that that impulse was of this world."I have since been told that when the letter reached him, his eyes were too dim to read it; yet, when he was informed of its purport, he asked that it be read to him. It was read, and then, with a hand already trembling at the touch of death, he took a pen and signed the last check of his career. That check was our emancipation; it was a check for the entire sum for which this Church of St. Athanasius—this beautiful church in which it is our privilege to worship God—stood indebted. I ask you to join in prayer for the soul of our dead benefactor and then to unite in the doxology for thanksgiving to God. 'Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?'"§8. "Where are you going?" gasped Betty.The people were kneeling, but Luke was on his feet."I'm going to get out of here," he answered. "I'm going to get into the open. I want fresh air."He strode down the aisle under the clustered pillars of the triforium, and Betty hurried after. At the church door stood a table bearing a pile of leaflets, and unconsciously he took one as he passed.§9. In the sunlit street, he felt a little ashamed of his impetuosity. Betty was indignant."Why did you make such a scene?" she asked."I'm sorry," said Luke. "I simply couldn't stand it. A priest talking like that! And Nicholson the priest!""He shouldn't have attacked you," Betty granted, "but you didn't put him in the wrong by behaving impolitely.""Oh, I don't care about putting him in the wrong, and I don't care about his attacking me!" Luke helped her into the waiting motor, and the car started smoothly on its return journey. "What I couldn't stand was the Church making a hero out of such a man; the Church selling itself for a few thousand dollars.""But the man did do good, Luke.""How much—compared with the evil he did?""I can't know that. Who can?""You talk like Nicholson!""No, I don't." She put her hand on his. "But what good can come of abusing the man?""I don't want him abused: I only don't want God's Church to make a saint out of him.""Nobody's doing that, Luke. They're simply being decent about him. After all, heisdead."Luke shook her hand free. Then, suddenly, he tossed back his head and broke into a high laugh. He frightened her."Luke! What is it?"He could not at once answer."Oh, what is the matter?" she pleaded."You!" he laughed. "You, too!" To control himself he unfolded and looked at the leaflet that he had picked up in the church doorway, and had been heedlessly folding and unfolding ever since. His mirth stopped. "Listen to this," he ordered. "By Jove, it's not Nicholson alone; it's the whole bunch, and speaking officially, too! Listen to this. It's a printed statement issued by the General Executive Committee of the whole church—not St. Athanasius alone, but the entire denomination—and it's worse than Nicholson's sermon." His eyes ran from line to line. "'We call upon the prayers of the faithful,'" he read as well as the motion of the car permitted.... "'He has not buried his talent nor hidden his candle under a bushel.... So far as a man's life can, his life exemplified Law and Order, realized the truth uttered by Richard Hooker: "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is in the bosom of God, the harmony of the world."'"Betty had been listening attentively."Well?" she asked."'Well?'" repeated Luke. "'Well?' Don't you see? The whole Church is standing up for him. And not our Church alone: all churches. He'd bought them—bought them!""Luke! How can you?""Yes, he has. One way or another. He or his kind: for I'm beginning to see at last he wasn't alone—never was and never will be. And seeing that, I'm not blaming him so much—any of thehims. I don't say, any more, he was worse than the rest of us; he was only stronger. Maybe he was only the average man in extraordinary circumstances. He didn't make them—I'm beginning to believe that, too,—they made him. But the Church! The churches! They've sinned against the light. They're liars. They're—why, they must be founded on a lie: their light must be darkness!"The girl had edged away from him, her brown eyes big with horror at his blasphemy. The motor was drawing up before the door of the Forbes house; it was drawing up in a quiet Brooklyn street. And there, in that Sunday stillness, and among those surroundings of commonplace respectability, suddenly the Marvel came to him.It came to him, this denial of Religion, as a profound religious experience. It was Miracle, burning, blinding, transfiguring. Elemental, tremendous. It was a stroke that affected his entire being; suffused him; changed him, spiritually, in every atom. It hurled him from all his old bases and set him in a new relation to the universe. It was not reformation; it was revolution. Luke was another personality: this was the "new birth." He saw the glory of individuality, the divinity of his humanity. In the flash of revelation, he learned to walk and knew that for all his life he had been permitting himself to be carried. Without guessing it, he had been, he now knew, all these years, afraid, and now, with this new inspiration, he faced all things and feared none. Believing, he had been dead, but denying, was alive again; faithful, he had been lost, faithless, he was found, and not by any other help than his own: he had found himself. It was the thing that, in the twinkling of an eye, can make an honest man of a liar, an abstainer of a dipsomaniac, good out of evil. It was the same thing that happens to a penitent at the moment of "conversion," of "receiving grace," of "experiencing religion"; the same force operating with the same power and the same manner, but in an opposite direction.As St. Paul rose from the earth after his vision near Damascus, so Luke staggered from the Forbes motor-car. His hands groped at the air."Betty!" he gasped; "tell your father I can't see him. Not now.—I'll be back later.—Perhaps in a little while.—Later."She put out her arms to him."What is it, Luke?" she cried. "What's the matter?"His eyes looked at her, but he did not see her. He turned from her to the street."I don't know," he said, "but I think—I think I'm Being Saved."CHAPTER XVII§1. For an hour, for two hours, he tried to adjust his mental and spiritual sight to the blazing illumination; but adjustment, he at length realized, must be a matter of many days. The illumination was too sudden and too intense. He could no more assess moral values and determine ethical duties than a new-born baby can know the use of those objects most habitual to its elders—a new-born baby to whom the lamp on a table and the moon in the sky are one and the same. There must be false starts on wrong roads; there must be disappointment and stumbling; there must even be moments of relapse. The great thing for Luke was that, as the lives of some men are changed forever for the better by an affirmation of faith, his life had now forever been changed for the better by a rejection of faith. He had denied the superhuman in man's affairs, and the banishment of the superhuman raised the human; it left the man no longer a pigmy trembling before a giant, but himself a giant, limited and mortal, yet self-sufficient and divine. He had found what was for him the ultimate strength; for the knowledge of how to use that strength rightly he could wait.Meanwhile, there was the patent obligation to Forbes. Forbes needed him; Luke returned to the Forbes house.§2. Forbes was waiting in the library."Where were you yesterday? Are you going crazy, Huber? You knew I needed you."The elder man had borne disaster hardly. He looked tired and ill."I'm sorry," said Luke. "I was busy.""Busy? What could have kept you busy in town when you knew this strike was going on? And you went to church this morning instead of waking me! Betty says you're sick. Are you?""No. I'm only getting well."Forbes's tone was more considerate:"Anyhow, you might have come in to luncheon. Have you had anything to eat?""I'm all right," said Luke."But Betty says——""Where is she?""She's in her room. I told her to lie down. She's all upset. Really, Huber——"Luke seated himself by the table covered with magazines and sprawling sections of the Sunday newspapers. Outwardly, he was as self-contained as during his days in Leighton's office."What was it you wanted to see me about?" he interrupted.Forbes took a chair opposite. He assumed the voice of persuasion."I want to be perfectly frank with you, Huber," he began.Luke thought: "I wonder what he is going to keep back." All that he said was: "Yes?""Yes," resumed Forbes, "and I want you to be perfectly frank with me. You once told me you'd made enemies of the people who've since made such trouble for us, because you had some letters or other that belonged to them, didn't you?"Luke bowed assent. He knew now what to expect."Well," Forbes went on, "the only use those letters were to you was political. Now that you can't use them politically, why don't you give them up?""You mean now that I've been chucked out of politics?""Well, you know you've ruined yourself there. You can never get back again. When you can't hurt your enemies, why not make them your friends?""No, thank you.""But these letters are of no use to you.""How do you know that?" asked Luke quietly.Forbes blushed."Are they?" he countered."And why," persisted Luke, "didn't you suggest this to me days ago?" His eyes probed the man before him. "What else did Judge Stein say to you?" he demanded.Forbes drew back in his chair. His flush deepened, but presently he made an impatient gesture."Oh, very well," he said defiantly, "the Judge did see me yesterday, and if you had been at the factory, as you should have been, you'd have seen him, too."Luke thought it unnecessary to remark that he had been honored by a previous call from Stein."What else did he say?" Luke repeated."He said a great deal; but the upshot of it was that he would induce your enemies, who are the men that control the trust we're competing with, to lower wages and join the fight against the employees, if you would agree to surrender those letters.""I won't do it," said Luke."Don't be hasty," Forbes implored. "Think of me. Think of Betty——"Luke winced."Don't begin that," he commanded."But what have you to gain?" asked Forbes."Nothing. I've nothing to gain. I've only something to keep: my self-respect.""Your self-conceit, you mean. Be reasonable, Huber. These people won't give in.""So I must?""They won't give in, and you can't get back to politics and can't get any paper to take up your case.""Oh,"—Luke could have laughed—"so Stein told you that, too, did he?""Never mind what he told me. The point is: his people can help you if you'll only acknowledge defeat, now that you're defeated. They can give you back all you've lost, and nobody else can.""And if I don't admit I'm whipped, they'll whip me some more?""They'll finish what they've begun, Huber; they will wipe out the Business, too.""I'm sorry," said Luke—"very sorry for you, I mean. But there's no use arguing: I won't give in."Forbes exhausted his every resource. He pleaded for the business, for Luke, for Betty. For an hour he sent the squadrons of his appeal against the impregnable wall of Luke's determination."What have you to gain?" he reiterated; and once he said: "The worst of the crowd is dead, anyhow."Luke was not listening. He was saying to himself:"What is it I am to do next? There is still a little money left to my account at the bank. It will keep me for a year and mother for a year—and then? I'm making Forbes hold out against the trust, and if he does hold out his mill is doomed. No hope there! Can I go back to the Law? I can't, because the Law is just what the Church is. The Law was made by the powerful, it is interpreted by their paid servants and administered by their slaves. It is a game devised by the crafty powerful to cheat the simple weak. The last five years have proved that to me, and I'm ashamed that it took me so long to learn. Betty——"He did not dare to think of Betty. He thought rather of the open country, of the smell of the earth on which he had been lying twenty-four hours ago, and the coolness and freedom of the white clouds against that sky of blue....Forbes was saying something about his grandfather and the Business. Luke got up."There's no use your wasting your breath," he declared. "Nothing that you could say would change me—no, nothing that even Betty could say! But I'll do this: I'll never be away from the factory again when I ought to be there; I'll stand by you till we've beaten these strikers or till they've ruined us."He walked out of the room and closed the door before Forbes could answer him, and he walked into Betty's arms.
Far down in the offices on the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper, everything was going on as usual. Only one room of the suite was empty, and even in it, under the solemn Washington, the stock-ticker was weaving out its yards and yards of tape by the windows that looked to the web of streets on which the people buzzed always like entangled flies.
CHAPTER XVI
§1. Public opinion had been unanimous concerning Luke's break with the Municipal Reform League. Only in the terms of their condemnation did the newspapers differ: they were all agreed that Luke was anathema. His letters to the press served him to small purpose; the Executive Committee issued a statement declaring that his withdrawal had been requested "because of inflammatory utterances and practical policies contrary to the spirit and purpose of the organization." The official statement was accepted and his individual version treated as a futile attempt to blacken a reputable, if mistaken, movement. It was everywhere believed that he had been forced to resign because of his Cooper Union speech, and it was in some quarters hinted that his former comrades held him responsible for the attempt to bribe the Heney lieutenant—a scandal made the most of during the subsequent period of the campaign and thereafter dropped before it reached the courts. In spite of the fact that the Committee had met in secret session, some of its members gave their own story of its turbulent dénouement to the reporters, and this was published in a form that made Luke appear as a cornered bully.
"Mr. Huber [said the most dignified editorial on the subject] was once doubtless a well-intentioned young man, but his first taste of popular applause seems to have intoxicated him, made him see visions of one real evil in every impossible quarter and caused a fit of that acute mania wherein one's best friends are mistaken for one's worst enemies. This is the only charitable explanation of the tragic end to a promising career, but on that end the Municipal Reform League is certainly to be congratulated."
Other editorials laughed at Luke's habit of hitting at vast conspiracies of which he never produced proof, and some charged him with flagrant dishonesty. He reverted for a time to his belief in publicity and bombarded the papers with letters of explanation; but the papers at first garbled and then forgot to print what he wrote. He sent for reporters to give them interviews, but, although the men still liked him, and politely took down his every word, they could never get their "copy" beyond the editorial desks. Within a few days, the former candidate was a newspaper joke.
He had, of course, written to his mother and sister about his engagement to Betty, since publicly announced, and they had replied with kindly letters, glad because of his planned marriage to the daughter of a man of good family supposed to be well-to-do, and hopeful for his continued happiness. Now, with the news of his political overthrow published broadcast, Jane wrote to ask him why he had been so foolish and to quote her husband the Congressman, to the effect that what Luke needed was an apprenticeship at practical politics; his mother's comment was one of love triumphant over the defects of the loved object and forgiveness for behavior inexplicable in his father's son.
The strike dragged on wearily. After the first outbreak of violence, the leaders were able, for a time, to prevail upon the strikers to use more peaceable methods; but the resulting days of siege were as trying for both sides as the active warfare had been. Forbes's boasts to the contrary notwithstanding, the firm, handicapped by the unskilled labor of the strike-breakers, found itself unable to fulfil its contracts; the new recruits were all raw men, whereas much of the factory's work was intended for trained women: badly needed money was being forfeited. The dispossessed employees, on the other hand, rapidly exhausted their own supplies; because they had gone over to industrial unionism, the American Federation of Labor, to which their old "local" had been attached through the trade-union that it was a part of, refused help and forbade the union to give any; there had been a national reaction against the I.W.W., and it could furnish but little money. The strikers held angry meetings and faced starvation; Luke and Forbes met in long conferences and faced ruin.
In those days, only Luke's love for Betty sustained him, and Betty, being new to both love and disaster, remained loyal. She was confident that the politicians and the papers were conspiring against him, and, knowing her father's gentleness in his home, she was equally confident that the strikers were wrong.
Luke did not inquire as to the reasons of her steadfastness. In the first darkness of disaster, he was too glad for support to quarrel with its origin. She was warm and human, sympathetic and at hand; she loved him. With all his heart and soul, he returned her love. In the last analysis, he fought, he told himself, for an ideal that, if greater than them both or separately, was yet necessary to them. The ideal had an undeniable lien upon the best of his strength of body and mind; yet whatever of these the ideal could spare was not for him, but for Betty.
Then came the death of the man whom Luke had regarded as the personification of the evils from which the country was suffering. It came close enough upon the Cooper Union speech to make that speech appear in the worst possible taste; but it was an event considered of such tremendous importance in itself that Luke was forgotten and once for all swept from the columns of the newspapers.
Those papers, even the daring few that had once or twice had the temerity feebly to question the lesser schemes of the man who now pursued no more schemes, were crowded with reverential accounts of his illness, awed pictures of his last moments, laudatory descriptions of his Napoleonic career, and editorials that spoke only of his undeniable greatness and his outstanding benefactions. The country talked as if its king had died; the achievements of none of the three presidents killed while in office had received louder praise or more lengthy attention. He left two large fortunes to individuals: one to the niece to whom Yeates was engaged, and one to be divided among more distant relatives, with bequests to faithful servants in his house and businesses; but the bulk of his money went to the colleges and hospitals that he had so magnificently assisted during his life. Firmly, the entire press observed the Latin maxim: they let nothing but good be spoken of the dead.
Luke was by this time prepared for such an attitude on the part of the papers, but, on his own part, he permitted no illusions. The fact of death must always be solemn; but the force that ended wrong-doing did not palliate it. This blow was like a judgment from Heaven. Luke did not think so much of how it would benefit him as of how it would benefit the country, but he was of too common clay not to spare some reflection to the influence of the event upon his own affairs: it would probably mean the dissolution of the antagonism to him in business; it would surely mean the cessation of the personal persecution that had already wrecked his political and professional career. Yet it was more for the triumph of the larger and broader good that he felt ready to chant aJubilate.
Once the thoughts crossed his mind: If Heaven were just, and this death were indeed Heaven's judgment, why had Heaven's judgment been so long delayed? And, since Heaven had been tardy when the death of a single man could thus ease the world and make for social righteousness, how could he have held it wrong had some sufferer from that evil struck, in Heaven's default, this single blow for the freedom of society? But he was in no mood to front casuistry: the thing had happened, and that was happiness enough.
He was reading the news in his rooms at the Arapahoe. He had sat up late with Forbes the night before and had risen late this morning, breakfasting in the apartment house. He knew that he ought to go to the factory, but he could not go at once.
He began again to dream dreams as he used to dream them. His personal failure counted for nothing in what must happen now. Suppose he were discredited and unable to win back the public confidence: somebody, without party and without politics, a larger and better man than he had been, would assume a national leadership, where his had been small and local, and would now bring the whole country back to the simple political faith and the plain, honest financial and industrial policies of the nation's founders. The mercenaries of darkness that had served the evil mind could not now, with the evil mind in perdition, stand for one day against the Army of Light.
Himself? He would begin over again, with Betty and for her. In the new order, under the reign of equity, public opinion would soon clarify, and he could re-establish himself and perform some part, however small, of the mighty work of reconstruction. He had been too busy of late with love and politics and business to continue in the social life in which Jack Porcellis had launched him. Porcellis's sporadic returns to New York—the man was just now in India on the pretense of studying its religions—were, latterly, Luke's sole occasions of approaching that existence. Save to secure the loan, he now contritely recalled, he had neglected Ruysdael, whose agent as yet evinced no misgivings over the effect of the strike upon Forbes's securities, and on his last incursions into Mrs. Ruysdael's set, though Luke had found himself liked, he was made aware that the liking for his small-talk was severely tempered by scorn for his enthusiasms. He must overcome all that now. To be of use, to help Betty, he must regain.
When he was a small boy, his ambition in life had been carpentry. At some remote time or other, he must have seen and admired one of those journeymen joiners of the elder type that used to tramp the country roads from small town to town and keep alive by doing odd jobs at the houses on their endless way. He loved tools and he loved wandering; even yet he loved them, and this figure had once represented Romance to him as definitely as the dead man in russet brown, long afterward, represented Evil. This morning, while he smiled at the memory of those young imaginings, Luke felt a little of their charm: it seemed impossible for him to form, as he should, his new plans while he sat in an apartment house in the city in which his plans must eventually be applied; he wished that he could drop everything for the day and go somewhere far out into the country to tramp the dusty roads and dream at ease.
It was then that the telephone announced a caller: ex-Judge Stein.
§2. The Judge, as he entered, presented the same dignified figure that he had presented when Luke last talked with him. His strong face was solemn, but undisturbed by its solemnity. He arranged with care the tails of his frock-coat as he seated himself in the best chair, but on this occasion he came directly to the point of his visit.
"Mr. Huber," he said, "a great many things have happened since we met."
Luke shrugged his shoulders.
"I'll admit you've kept me pretty busy, Judge."
"I was not referring to the unnecessary trouble in which you involved yourself. I was referring to the fact that your month has elapsed and that the man you threatened is dead."
The news of the morning had temporarily annulled Luke's sense of time. Only yesterday he had wondered what use he should make of the Rollins letters, now carried in a safer place than his coat-pocket; to-day he had forgotten them.
"Yes," he said, gathering his thoughts behind his impassive face: "the month's over and the man's dead."
The Judge leaned impressively forward. He shook his white head gravely.
"Death," said the Judge, "wipes out all animosities. I know you would not use those letters now, Mr. Huber, because I know you would not strike a dead man. So I have come to ask you to deliver them to me." He held out his opened hand.
Luke blinked at it.
"I don't understand," said he. "I thought you always represented yourself as—well, as not professionally retained in this matter?"
"I am now," said the Judge.
"Oh! By the estate?"
"Not directly and not altogether." Stein chose his words. "I am retained by the company whose property those letters are."
"I thought you had left the railroad-claim business long ago. Perhaps you are specially retained for this one job?"
The Judge looked hurt. His firm mouth quivered.
"Mr. Huber," he said, "I am in no frame of mind for joking to-day. This man is dead, and he was my friend——"
"I'm sorry to have seemed to joke," Luke interrupted.
Stein bowed and went on:
"He is dead, and whatever his faults—we all have our faults, Mr. Huber—they died with him. I am here only to ask you to show a decent respect for the memory of a dead enemy. I am here to ask you to be magnanimous, Mr. Huber."
"Magnanimous? You talk as if I had won!"
"The living are always the winners," said the Judge.
Luke began to doubt that theory.
"And so you want me to surrender these letters?"
"Exactly. What use can they be to you now?"
"There were other people involved. Are they willing to accept my terms? I know they can't hurt me, because I know they haven't the courage or the power of the man you've been talking about. But that's neither here nor there: will they accept my terms?"
"They did not write either of the letters, Mr. Huber."
"They're inculpated by them."
"Not legally."
"Enough inculpated to serve my purpose."
"If you think that," said the Judge, "I can only repeat the offer I made you when I called here before."
Luke smiled.
"And I can only refuse it."
"Mr. Huber," the Judge began again, "the man is dead——"
Luke's nerves had been strained for many a day. He leaped to his feet.
"Of course the man's dead!" he cried. "He was dead this morning, and he's still dead. Why do you keep saying that over and over? I'm tired of hearing it." He saw the look of pain return. "I beg your pardon," he said; "but I might as well tell you first and last that I won't surrender those letters, no matter what you plead or threaten. I won't tell you what I intend to do with them, either. And the only reason I know that they must be of use to me is your coming here and saying they aren't any use."
The Judge rose also.
"Mr. Huber," said he, "I am very sorry to hear you speak this way. I can't tell you how sorry I am. You ought to know by this time——"
"I couldn't know anything," Luke cut in, "that would make me change my mind."
"But suppose," said the Judge heavily, "suppose my friends happen to know that the situation of the Forbes Company——"
Luke's face went very white.
He opened the door.
"Good-morning, Judge," he said.
§3. Stein's polite, but portentous adieux were not a quarter of an hour old before Luke sought the office of the newspaper that had been the last to refuse him space in its columns for his political explanations. The man that was dead had, it seemed, left a something of his influence behind him: Luke resolved to strike at it.
The office-boy was a long time returning, and, when he did, it was to announce:
"He says ter find out whatcher want."
"Give me my card," said Luke.
He scribbled on the card: "Non-political."
"Now," he said, "try him again."
§4. The editor was one of those men whom newspaper-work so affects that they look any age between thirty and fifty. His nervous face was full of tense lines, and every few minutes his mouth twitched.
Luke told his story and showed the letters. The editor read them.
"Why do you want to do this?" he asked.
"Why?" Luke was amazed. "Because I want to protect the public."
"Then you'd better go to the M. & N. railroad."
"But you know they wouldn't do anything. They've promised before."
"I can't believe that," said the editor.
"I know it," said Luke.
"I can't believe it. You have always been too sudden, Mr. Huber—if you'll pardon my saying so. At any rate, we can't print these things." He returned the letters. "After all, the man's dead, you know."
"What's that got to do with it?" Luke's voice rose in reply to the hated phrase. "I want to keep some other people from dying."
The editor picked up a proof-sheet and began to read it.
"It would be bad taste for us to print that, just now," he said. "Come around in a couple of weeks, and we may think about it. Why, the body's hardly cold yet."
§5. As Forbes had once gone from bank to bank, Luke went that morning from newspaper-office to newspaper-office. Yet there was this difference: that, whereas Forbes had only tried a few banks, Luke tried a dozen newspaper-offices. His search included the papers notoriously controlled by the money or the advertising of the power that opposed him; he even tried some of those journals of the city which are printed in foreign tongues, and he tried the radical press. He tried all in vain.
Most of the editors were men that had fought him when he was the candidate of the Municipal Reform League; some that he sought were of those who had tired of him when he pestered them with explanations of his political overthrow. Many refused to see him; one or two pronounced him mad. The radicals shared the view of the man with whom he first spoke: they would not be guilty of bad taste. Wherever he got word with a person in authority, the word was the same; he met with that all-sufficient argument:
"After all, the man's dead."
§6. When, finally, he acknowledged defeat, his wearied nerves manifested their condition through deep physical exhaustion. He could not front the thought of passing the remainder of the day at the factory; could not go at once from one losing fight to another. However much he might be needed, he could not do it. Until he had rested, he would be useless, and worse than useless.
He did not go back to the Arapahoe. Instead, with the open country calling him, he went to the Grand Central Station and took a train into Connecticut.
The day was Saturday, and the cars were filled with released workers, but Luke avoided them by going far and descending at the least important of the train's stops. Tired though he was, he walked beyond the little town. He cut across fields to a hill crowned by a clump of trees and there, in the shade, threw himself on the ground and lay for hours thinking of nothing and looking at white clouds sailing across a blue sky. He wished that he could lie here forever....
It was one o'clock in the morning before he returned to his rooms. It was far too late to reply to the score of telephone-calls that, he was told, Forbes had made on him.
Luke remembered that he had promised Betty to go with her to service at Nicholson's church.
§7. He was strengthened by his brief rest, and he went to Betty with a heart renewed.
"Father's still asleep," she said, as she met him in the hall of the Forbes house, her gloved fingers busied with her hair, preventing the escape of one of the yellow wire pins that held the few strands too short for her pins of tortoise-shell. "He wanted to be called, but he was so tired out, I told the maid not to disturb him. He sat up ever so late, waiting for you. Where were you, Luke?"
Luke had rarely seen her looking better. The Sunday calm had erased all the tokens of the recent trying days from her face: it was rosy and young; it was appealingly almost childish. The morning sun was in her hair; her brown eyes were wide and bright. He did not want to spoil her by the story of his yesterday's defeat, and so he passed it by with some facile excuses for his absence from the factory.
"We're late," he said, as he helped her into the Forbes motor-car.
The chauffeur ran close to the speed-laws all the way to Manhattan. They reached their journey's end immediately after the choir had taken its position in the chancel.
The ritualistic church of St. Athanasius is one of the handsomest in New York. It was built in close imitation of Beverley Minster, and so elaborate was the work done upon it that, in spite of its wealthy congregation's assistance, it still staggered under the load of a heavy debt. It has the Yorkshire building's two Early English transepts, Perpendicular towers, and a Late Decorated nave with flying and pinnacled buttresses. Inside, as Luke and Betty entered it, the warmly-colored light fell through many Lancet windows on the crowd of fashionable worshipers kneeling before narrow chairs. Nicholson's voice, coming from behind the choir-screen, sounded clear but far away.
Luke and Betty walked up the nearest aisle and took the seats assigned to the Forbes family, close to the carved pulpit and under the triforium. The high arches were carried on clustered pillars, and, down the perspective of the nave, Luke could see into the choir, to the Decorated reredos, where, as in Beverley, the piers increased in size by successive groups of shafts that projected like corbels. He knelt beside her and tried to give his mind to the service; but his eyes, familiar though they were with the church, wandered to the north aisle's windows and the ogee and foliated arcade under them, to the people in front of him, and so, inevitably, to the girl at his side.
The service proceeded. The people said the Lord's Prayer; Nicholson recited the collect, and then read the Ten Commandments of Moses, the congregation responding.
"Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law."
After the creed, Nicholson walked to the pulpit. He climbed its steps, and for a few moments only his clasped hands were visible as he knelt inside. Then rising, he took his stole from the pulpit rail, kissed the cross embroidered at the top of the stole, and put it on.
"In the Book of Ecclesiastes," he began, "in the ninth chapter and the second verse, it is written:
"'All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not.'"
Nicholson's face was earnest. It was at once stern and irradiated, the face of an ascetic turned seer.
"And in the General Epistle of St. James," he proceeded, "in the second chapter and the twenty-second verse:
"'Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?'"
Nicholson spoke without notes, but without hesitation.
"A great man," he said, "has just died. We have heard evil report of him, and good report. We have heard whispers against him, and we have seen good that he has done; but his greatness no man questioned. To-day he has passed to his last account. To-day the dead man stands before his Eternal Judge. One of those events that happen to the rich and poor alike has happened to him. With what he has done that is over, the Court of Heaven now alone, in all its boundless mercy, has to deal. We that remain here on earth may not judge of that. We that remain on earth must consider the things that he has done and are not over, the things he has left behind; we must concern ourselves only with what concerns us; it is our duty to remember him by the works that he has made his monument."
The preacher dwelt upon the dead man's rise from poverty to vast riches, a hopeful lesson in the reward of thrift and wisdom to every poor boy in a republic that grants equal opportunity to all. He spoke with an admiration of the genius that had carved its way to power until its will was felt in the uttermost corners of the earth.
As he proceeded, Nicholson seemed to forget his admonition against the judgment of things over and done with. He made direct reference to Luke's Cooper Union speech, and he looked full in Luke's face as he made it.
"Not long ago," he said, "while this man was tottering upon the brink of eternity, another man, a sincere, but misguided man, made terrible charges against him, charges that reflected, however veiled, upon the character and motives not only of the man now dead, but a whole group of people eminent in public and business life. And what was the result? Nothing that lent the least credit to the accuser's intelligence or appreciation of the value of evidence, for nothing at all was proven, nothing even corroborated."
Luke flushed. He felt Betty looking at him, but he would not return her gaze. He felt other people in the congregation turned toward him. He could not guess what had changed Nicholson.
The sermon was proceeding with praises of the dead man's benefactions. One by one they were described and extolled.
"His greatness," said Nicholson, "would have availed him nothing at this one event for the righteous and the wicked if he had not had charity, for we are told that though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, we are become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Charity, however, this man had. The institutions that he supported and has endowed have given and now forever will give learning to thousands who, but for them, would have lived in ignorance—healing to thousands who, but for them, would have died in agony.
"Charity: but charity alone will not suffice. Sounding brass itself, unless it is informed by faith! And this man's sublime faith even his worst enemy cannot deny. For his counsel and advice, for his painstaking and sagacious investment of its funds the Church is indebted to this man as it is to no other. Many a denomination outside our own fold can truly say the same of him and should say and does say how much we owe him, also, for the unceasing flow of his money into our treasuries. He did not speak of these things. He did not let his right hand know what his left hand did; but we of the Church remember that he gave millions of dollars to the faith.
"The faith of men of money is tested by their money; yet this man's faith had many another test and rose triumphant from them all. His attendance at the Church's services—not only on Sundays, but on fast-days and holidays, on saints'-days and work-days—never failed. His wisdom was free to our councils, and I have been told on reliable authority that he never rose in the morning, went to bed at night, or embarked on any business enterprise, however small, without first humbly and privately asking direction of the Most High. He knew in his every act that the greatest man is as nothing before God; and when he came to die, he died like a Christian, a priest of God by his side and the words of God's mercy sounding in his dulling ears. From first to last, his works and his faith were one: 'Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?' For us who are Christians, that is enough. It is enough to make us each pray to meet his end, each at his own station in life, as this great man met his.De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
Only amazement had held Luke in his chair. At this phrase, he half rose.
Nicholson, however, was concluding:
"There is but one word more, a word personal to us of this congregation, to be said. I need not recall to you the heavy privations that this church in which we now are has undergone. They were generously met and nobly borne, but, in spite of all your nobility and all your generosity, the time came, a week since, when it seemed indeed as if the forces of evil were about to conquer, and as if, unless Heaven intervened, this beautiful building must pass out of our hands.
"Three days before the death of the man I have been speaking of this morning, an impulse came to me, and I wrote him a letter. My friends, I do not believe that that impulse was of this world.
"I have since been told that when the letter reached him, his eyes were too dim to read it; yet, when he was informed of its purport, he asked that it be read to him. It was read, and then, with a hand already trembling at the touch of death, he took a pen and signed the last check of his career. That check was our emancipation; it was a check for the entire sum for which this Church of St. Athanasius—this beautiful church in which it is our privilege to worship God—stood indebted. I ask you to join in prayer for the soul of our dead benefactor and then to unite in the doxology for thanksgiving to God. 'Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?'"
§8. "Where are you going?" gasped Betty.
The people were kneeling, but Luke was on his feet.
"I'm going to get out of here," he answered. "I'm going to get into the open. I want fresh air."
He strode down the aisle under the clustered pillars of the triforium, and Betty hurried after. At the church door stood a table bearing a pile of leaflets, and unconsciously he took one as he passed.
§9. In the sunlit street, he felt a little ashamed of his impetuosity. Betty was indignant.
"Why did you make such a scene?" she asked.
"I'm sorry," said Luke. "I simply couldn't stand it. A priest talking like that! And Nicholson the priest!"
"He shouldn't have attacked you," Betty granted, "but you didn't put him in the wrong by behaving impolitely."
"Oh, I don't care about putting him in the wrong, and I don't care about his attacking me!" Luke helped her into the waiting motor, and the car started smoothly on its return journey. "What I couldn't stand was the Church making a hero out of such a man; the Church selling itself for a few thousand dollars."
"But the man did do good, Luke."
"How much—compared with the evil he did?"
"I can't know that. Who can?"
"You talk like Nicholson!"
"No, I don't." She put her hand on his. "But what good can come of abusing the man?"
"I don't want him abused: I only don't want God's Church to make a saint out of him."
"Nobody's doing that, Luke. They're simply being decent about him. After all, heisdead."
Luke shook her hand free. Then, suddenly, he tossed back his head and broke into a high laugh. He frightened her.
"Luke! What is it?"
He could not at once answer.
"Oh, what is the matter?" she pleaded.
"You!" he laughed. "You, too!" To control himself he unfolded and looked at the leaflet that he had picked up in the church doorway, and had been heedlessly folding and unfolding ever since. His mirth stopped. "Listen to this," he ordered. "By Jove, it's not Nicholson alone; it's the whole bunch, and speaking officially, too! Listen to this. It's a printed statement issued by the General Executive Committee of the whole church—not St. Athanasius alone, but the entire denomination—and it's worse than Nicholson's sermon." His eyes ran from line to line. "'We call upon the prayers of the faithful,'" he read as well as the motion of the car permitted.... "'He has not buried his talent nor hidden his candle under a bushel.... So far as a man's life can, his life exemplified Law and Order, realized the truth uttered by Richard Hooker: "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is in the bosom of God, the harmony of the world."'"
Betty had been listening attentively.
"Well?" she asked.
"'Well?'" repeated Luke. "'Well?' Don't you see? The whole Church is standing up for him. And not our Church alone: all churches. He'd bought them—bought them!"
"Luke! How can you?"
"Yes, he has. One way or another. He or his kind: for I'm beginning to see at last he wasn't alone—never was and never will be. And seeing that, I'm not blaming him so much—any of thehims. I don't say, any more, he was worse than the rest of us; he was only stronger. Maybe he was only the average man in extraordinary circumstances. He didn't make them—I'm beginning to believe that, too,—they made him. But the Church! The churches! They've sinned against the light. They're liars. They're—why, they must be founded on a lie: their light must be darkness!"
The girl had edged away from him, her brown eyes big with horror at his blasphemy. The motor was drawing up before the door of the Forbes house; it was drawing up in a quiet Brooklyn street. And there, in that Sunday stillness, and among those surroundings of commonplace respectability, suddenly the Marvel came to him.
It came to him, this denial of Religion, as a profound religious experience. It was Miracle, burning, blinding, transfiguring. Elemental, tremendous. It was a stroke that affected his entire being; suffused him; changed him, spiritually, in every atom. It hurled him from all his old bases and set him in a new relation to the universe. It was not reformation; it was revolution. Luke was another personality: this was the "new birth." He saw the glory of individuality, the divinity of his humanity. In the flash of revelation, he learned to walk and knew that for all his life he had been permitting himself to be carried. Without guessing it, he had been, he now knew, all these years, afraid, and now, with this new inspiration, he faced all things and feared none. Believing, he had been dead, but denying, was alive again; faithful, he had been lost, faithless, he was found, and not by any other help than his own: he had found himself. It was the thing that, in the twinkling of an eye, can make an honest man of a liar, an abstainer of a dipsomaniac, good out of evil. It was the same thing that happens to a penitent at the moment of "conversion," of "receiving grace," of "experiencing religion"; the same force operating with the same power and the same manner, but in an opposite direction.
As St. Paul rose from the earth after his vision near Damascus, so Luke staggered from the Forbes motor-car. His hands groped at the air.
"Betty!" he gasped; "tell your father I can't see him. Not now.—I'll be back later.—Perhaps in a little while.—Later."
She put out her arms to him.
"What is it, Luke?" she cried. "What's the matter?"
His eyes looked at her, but he did not see her. He turned from her to the street.
"I don't know," he said, "but I think—I think I'm Being Saved."
CHAPTER XVII
§1. For an hour, for two hours, he tried to adjust his mental and spiritual sight to the blazing illumination; but adjustment, he at length realized, must be a matter of many days. The illumination was too sudden and too intense. He could no more assess moral values and determine ethical duties than a new-born baby can know the use of those objects most habitual to its elders—a new-born baby to whom the lamp on a table and the moon in the sky are one and the same. There must be false starts on wrong roads; there must be disappointment and stumbling; there must even be moments of relapse. The great thing for Luke was that, as the lives of some men are changed forever for the better by an affirmation of faith, his life had now forever been changed for the better by a rejection of faith. He had denied the superhuman in man's affairs, and the banishment of the superhuman raised the human; it left the man no longer a pigmy trembling before a giant, but himself a giant, limited and mortal, yet self-sufficient and divine. He had found what was for him the ultimate strength; for the knowledge of how to use that strength rightly he could wait.
Meanwhile, there was the patent obligation to Forbes. Forbes needed him; Luke returned to the Forbes house.
§2. Forbes was waiting in the library.
"Where were you yesterday? Are you going crazy, Huber? You knew I needed you."
The elder man had borne disaster hardly. He looked tired and ill.
"I'm sorry," said Luke. "I was busy."
"Busy? What could have kept you busy in town when you knew this strike was going on? And you went to church this morning instead of waking me! Betty says you're sick. Are you?"
"No. I'm only getting well."
Forbes's tone was more considerate:
"Anyhow, you might have come in to luncheon. Have you had anything to eat?"
"I'm all right," said Luke.
"But Betty says——"
"Where is she?"
"She's in her room. I told her to lie down. She's all upset. Really, Huber——"
Luke seated himself by the table covered with magazines and sprawling sections of the Sunday newspapers. Outwardly, he was as self-contained as during his days in Leighton's office.
"What was it you wanted to see me about?" he interrupted.
Forbes took a chair opposite. He assumed the voice of persuasion.
"I want to be perfectly frank with you, Huber," he began.
Luke thought: "I wonder what he is going to keep back." All that he said was: "Yes?"
"Yes," resumed Forbes, "and I want you to be perfectly frank with me. You once told me you'd made enemies of the people who've since made such trouble for us, because you had some letters or other that belonged to them, didn't you?"
Luke bowed assent. He knew now what to expect.
"Well," Forbes went on, "the only use those letters were to you was political. Now that you can't use them politically, why don't you give them up?"
"You mean now that I've been chucked out of politics?"
"Well, you know you've ruined yourself there. You can never get back again. When you can't hurt your enemies, why not make them your friends?"
"No, thank you."
"But these letters are of no use to you."
"How do you know that?" asked Luke quietly.
Forbes blushed.
"Are they?" he countered.
"And why," persisted Luke, "didn't you suggest this to me days ago?" His eyes probed the man before him. "What else did Judge Stein say to you?" he demanded.
Forbes drew back in his chair. His flush deepened, but presently he made an impatient gesture.
"Oh, very well," he said defiantly, "the Judge did see me yesterday, and if you had been at the factory, as you should have been, you'd have seen him, too."
Luke thought it unnecessary to remark that he had been honored by a previous call from Stein.
"What else did he say?" Luke repeated.
"He said a great deal; but the upshot of it was that he would induce your enemies, who are the men that control the trust we're competing with, to lower wages and join the fight against the employees, if you would agree to surrender those letters."
"I won't do it," said Luke.
"Don't be hasty," Forbes implored. "Think of me. Think of Betty——"
Luke winced.
"Don't begin that," he commanded.
"But what have you to gain?" asked Forbes.
"Nothing. I've nothing to gain. I've only something to keep: my self-respect."
"Your self-conceit, you mean. Be reasonable, Huber. These people won't give in."
"So I must?"
"They won't give in, and you can't get back to politics and can't get any paper to take up your case."
"Oh,"—Luke could have laughed—"so Stein told you that, too, did he?"
"Never mind what he told me. The point is: his people can help you if you'll only acknowledge defeat, now that you're defeated. They can give you back all you've lost, and nobody else can."
"And if I don't admit I'm whipped, they'll whip me some more?"
"They'll finish what they've begun, Huber; they will wipe out the Business, too."
"I'm sorry," said Luke—"very sorry for you, I mean. But there's no use arguing: I won't give in."
Forbes exhausted his every resource. He pleaded for the business, for Luke, for Betty. For an hour he sent the squadrons of his appeal against the impregnable wall of Luke's determination.
"What have you to gain?" he reiterated; and once he said: "The worst of the crowd is dead, anyhow."
Luke was not listening. He was saying to himself:
"What is it I am to do next? There is still a little money left to my account at the bank. It will keep me for a year and mother for a year—and then? I'm making Forbes hold out against the trust, and if he does hold out his mill is doomed. No hope there! Can I go back to the Law? I can't, because the Law is just what the Church is. The Law was made by the powerful, it is interpreted by their paid servants and administered by their slaves. It is a game devised by the crafty powerful to cheat the simple weak. The last five years have proved that to me, and I'm ashamed that it took me so long to learn. Betty——"
He did not dare to think of Betty. He thought rather of the open country, of the smell of the earth on which he had been lying twenty-four hours ago, and the coolness and freedom of the white clouds against that sky of blue....
Forbes was saying something about his grandfather and the Business. Luke got up.
"There's no use your wasting your breath," he declared. "Nothing that you could say would change me—no, nothing that even Betty could say! But I'll do this: I'll never be away from the factory again when I ought to be there; I'll stand by you till we've beaten these strikers or till they've ruined us."
He walked out of the room and closed the door before Forbes could answer him, and he walked into Betty's arms.