第64章

Sister Soulsby's large eyes beamed down upon him in reply, at first in open merriment, then more soberly, till their regard was almost pensive.

"Let us talk of something else," she said."All that is past and gone.It has nothing to do with you, anyway.

I've got some advice to give you about keeping up this grip you've got on your people."The young minister had risen to his feet while she spoke.

He put his hands in his pockets, and with rounded shoulders began slowly pacing the room.After a turn or two he came to the desk, and leaned against it.

"I doubt if it's worth while going into that," he said, in the solemn tone of one who feels that an irrevocable thing is being uttered.She waited to hear more, apparently.

"I think I shall go away--give up the ministry," he added.

Sister Soulsby's eyes revealed no such shock of consternation as he, unconsciously, had looked for.They remained quite calm;and when she spoke, they deepened, to fit her speech, with what he read to be a gaze of affectionate melancholy--one might say pity.She shook her head slowly.

"No--don't let any one else hear you say that," she replied.

"My poor young friend, it's no good to even think it.

The real wisdom is to school yourself to move along smoothly, and not fret, and get the best of what's going.I've known others who felt as you do--of course there are times when every young man of brains and high notions feels that way--but there's no help for it.Those who tried to get out only broke themselves.Those who stayed in, and made the best of it--well, one of them will be a bishop in another ten years."Theron had started walking again."But the moral degradation of it!" he snapped out at her over his shoulder.

"I'd rather earn the meanest living, at an honest trade, and be free from it.""That may all be," responded Sister Soulsby."But it isn't a question of what you'd rather do.It's what you can do.

How could you earn a living? What trade or business do you suppose you could take up now, and get a living out of?

Not one, my man, not one."

Theron stopped and stared at her.This view of his capabilities came upon him with the force and effect of a blow.

"I don't discover, myself," he began stumblingly, "that I'm so conspicuously inferior to the men I see about me who do make livings, and very good ones, too.""Of course you're not," she replied with easy promptness;"you're greatly the other way, or I shouldn't be taking this trouble with you.But you're what you are because you're where you are.The moment you try on being somewhere else, you're done for.In all this world nobody else comes to such unmerciful and universal grief as the unfrocked priest."The phrase sent Theron's fancy roving."I know a Catholic priest," he said irrelevantly, "who doesn't believe an atom in--in things.""Very likely," said Sister Soulsby."Most of us do.

But you don't hear him talking about going and earning his living, I'll bet! Or if he does, he takes powerful good care not to go, all the same.They've got horse-sense, those priests.They're artists, too.They know how to allow for the machinery behind the scenes.""But it's all so different," urged the young minister;"the same things are not expected of them.Now I sat the other night and watched those people you got up around the altar-rail, groaning and shouting and crying, and the others jumping up and down with excitement, and Sister Lovejoy--did you see her?--coming out of her pew and regularly waltzing in the aisle, with her eyes shut, like a whirling dervish--I positively believe it was all that made me ill.I couldn't stand it.I can't stand it now.I won't go back to it! Nothing shall make me!""Oh-h, yes, you will," she rejoined soothingly.

"There's nothing else to do.Just put a good face on it, and make up your mind to get through by treading on as few corns as possible, and keeping your own toes well in, and you'll be surprised how easy it'll all come to be.

You were speaking of the revival business.Now that exemplifies just what I was saying--it's a part of our machinery.

Now a church is like everything else,--it's got to have a boss, a head, an authority of some sort, that people will listen to and mind.The Catholics are different, as you say.

Their church is chuck-full of authority--all the way from the Pope down to the priest--and accordingly they do as they're told.But the Protestants--your Methodists most of all--they say 'No, we won't have any authority, we won't obey any boss.' Very well, what happens?

We who are responsible for running the thing, and raising the money and so on--we have to put on a spurt every once in a while, and work up a general state of excitement;and while it's going, don't you see that THAT is the authority, the motive power, whatever you like to call it, by which things are done? Other denominations don't need it.

We do, and that's why we've got it."

"But the mean dishonesty of it all!" Theron broke forth.

He moved about again, his bowed face drawn as with bodily suffering."The low-born tricks, the hypocrisies!

I feel as if I could never so much as look at these people here again without disgust.""Oh, now that's where you make your mistake,"Sister Soulsby put in placidly."These people of yours are not a whit worse than other people.

They've got their good streaks and their bad streaks, just like the rest of us.Take them by and large, they're quite on a par with other folks the whole country through.""I don't believe there's another congregation in the Conference where--where this sort of thing would have been needed, or, I might say, tolerated," insisted Theron.

"Perhaps you're right," the other assented; "but that only shows that your people here are different from the others--not that they're worse.You don't seem to realize: