Читать книгу Swift Water - Emilie Loring - Страница 7

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From one end of a long mahogany table in the plate-glass and gum-wood seclusion of the director’s room at the Bank, Christopher Wynne faced the Standing Committee of his church. Six men. Six against one, he decided as he looked from one well-groomed member to another. Luther Calvin, chairman, occupied the ponderous arm-chair opposite him. With a nice sense of theatric values a shaft of sunlight, alive with shifting golden motes, shot through the window, played up the patent-leather glossiness of his black hair, the hard lines about his thin lips. He cleared his throat, observed in his metallic voice which made Christopher think of a saw drawn across wood:

“The Contessa di Fanfani has been most generous.”

“She hasn’t given the money yet,” reminded the rubicund Farrell, whose waist-line was burdened with considerable undistributed flesh. His daughter Fanchon would look like him as she grew older, Christopher decided irrelevantly.

“Don’t be a pessimist, Farrell,” reproved Calvin caustically. “Of course we can easily fulfil conditions.”

“I agree with Farrell that one hundred thousand dollars is a lot to get out of people—before Christmas of all times—who, today, want something for their money. Most of them don’t consider the things of the spirit tangible,” sighed a gaunt man with apprehensive eyes.

“This meeting was called to discuss ways and means of doing it. The best, most effective method of promoting a drive.” Calvin leaned forward. His agate eyes were at their stillest, profoundly inspective as he inquired, “What’s your idea about it, Mr. Wynne? If you will start off with a letter—”

Christopher sensed the man’s antagonism. Sue had been right when she had warned him to look out for a storm. He thrust his hands hard into the pockets of his gray coat.

“Here’s where I burn my bridges,” he told himself. He hated a row but he would stand back of his convictions. His voice sounded unnaturally harsh to himself as he declared:

“The method is for you, gentlemen, and you alone to decide. I have nothing to say except to remind you of the agreement made when I came to the church. My time was to be devoted to services, to intimate, personal contact with my people when they needed my help in time of trouble, in their restless groping for a sustaining faith, for a personal religion; to the boys of the congregation; to study which would make this church a spiritual force in the community. I was not to be called upon to give a moment to the business side.”

Luther Calvin’s thin face hardened. He drummed corrugated finger-nails on the table. Demanded:

“Do you mean, Mr. Wynne, that when we have a chance to substantially increase the value of this half-million dollar property, you won’t help?”

Christopher was aware of six pairs of hostile eyes regarding him. He kept his voice well in hand as he answered:

“I mean, Mr. Calvin and gentlemen of the committee, that I will take no part in this drive for money. I can’t do it and do justice to my work. To prepare a sermon which matters, which is interesting, which throws a bridge from the mind of the preacher across to the minds of his congregation, which reaches their vital concerns, takes reflection, thought, time, a refreshed, vigorous outlook. Work for this drive would take me out of my study at the church during the hours which I want—and intend to devote to my parishioners. You would be surprised at the number who drop in for help, sympathy, who feel that they are up against an unyielding wall. Now appeals are coming from my radio congregation, which knows no caste, no creed, no sect. It is my job to help these troubled souls find a gate, which will open, if not upon peace and security, at least upon courage.”

Calvin leaned back in his chair.

“Can’t you understand, Mr. Wynne, that people will give more generously if you ask for the money?”

A surge of indignation brought Christopher to his feet.

“If the people in this community want this church and all that it stands for to endure, if they care for the intangible things of the spirit, they will support it, no matter who asks for the money. I repeat, I cannot do the work I came here to do and put my time and strength into speaking and writing to procure this fund.” Christopher could smell the smoke from his burning bridges. Now that the conflagration had started he would throw on fuel he had been eager for some time to contribute.

“And that isn’t all. I protest against an appeal for money for it from the pulpit. Many a man—who, as boy had church-going forcibly fed to him—who comes edging back for that help and spiritual stimulation the world alone cannot give, has been repelled by the weekly intrusion of the contribution plate.”

Luther Calvin regarded him stonily.

“And you call yourself a religious leader!”

Christopher felt the blood drain from his face. He clenched the back of his chair with white-knuckled hands as he repeated:

“A religious leader! It depends upon your definition of the term. If you mean that I am trying to recreate, not exhort, to work out a means by which a man may approach the future along the broadening road of faith, with a sure sense of the beauty and challenge of the divine in him, I am. This church was founded on the basis of Christian unity. No matter to what sect he belonged a man’s religious belief was to be respected, the fact that all sects were working together was to add vitality to the whole. With that understanding I became the minister of the Community Church of Garston. And I mean to minister. Day by day the conviction strengthens that my thought, my time, my strength, should be devoted to making this church—the very atmosphere inside the walls—a spiritual force, to helping my parishioners over rough places in the road of life, to helping them acquire a faith which will bring them in contact with God. The greatest need of the country today is personal religion. If I take part in the business of this organization, my mind, my heart, my soul will be squeezed dry. Understand, I am not belittling the church’s need of money—I am defending my position against the pressure of its perfectly legitimate problems. Remember old Dryden warned:

“ ‘The province of the soul is large enough

To fill up every cranny of your time,

And leave you much to answer, if one wretch

Be damn’d by your neglect.’

“That is where I stand, gentlemen, in regard to my part in this drive for money. Good morning.”

Riddled by critical, condemning eyes Christopher backed from the room. He crossed the marble and bronze foyer of the bank unmindful of the friendly recognition of depositors and clerks. He caught a glimpse of his white, set face as he passed an ornate mirror.

“Look as though you’d met up with a threshing machine,” he told his reflection. What would they do to him, he wondered as he strode along the main street. He wouldn’t return to his study. He would be unable to concentrate on his work. Better walk till he’d thought things through. He cut across a field. He would get out of the town, his thoughts burned clearer in the open.

He pulled off his hat and drew a long breath as he entered a wooded road. It bordered the river which shone with the burnished brightness of a Crusader’s shield. Hemlocks bent tall heads as though to glimpse their stately, dusky beauty repeated in its stillness. A single shaft of scarlet sumach, lingering long beyond its time, flamed near the water’s edge. Leafless maples waved to glassy reflections which waved back again. Christopher paid tribute softly:

“ ‘All space is holy; for all space is filled by Thee.’ ”

The calm beauty of his surroundings relaxed his taut nerves. He could get a fair perspective now. Word by word he recalled the conference, visualized the men about the mahogany table. Curious how that bit of Dryden’s had shot up to the surface of his mind. He hadn’t thought of it since he’d learned it in English A in college. Some of the faces had been set and hostile, two of them calculating. Farrell’s had been faintly sympathetic. But weather-vanes all, set to turn with the wind of Calvin’s approval or disapproval.

Had he himself been stubborn? Was his attitude wrong? Would the controversy bound to follow his stand break up the Community Church? No. It had not been founded upon perishable stuff. In the admixture, the representatives of different creeds had undergone a spiritual change, never again to return to their original beliefs. Should he have consented to work for the money? Convinced as he was that his stand was justifiable should he have offered his resignation? His thoughts traveled back over the crowded week just passed. It had been packed to the brim with services, visits, conferences, reading, in the hope of gaining something to pass on to those in trouble. Where would he have found a moment to devote to the business of the church? “You cannot live skim milk and pray cream,” Beecher had said. What motive had loosed the Contessa’s purse strings—purse strings which had before this been drawn tight for everything but luxurious living? In answer memory broadcast Vittoria di Fanfani’s voice:

“Do not be discouraged, Luigi. There is more than one way to get what we want.”

Christopher stopped in his long stride. Would she spend one hundred thousand dollars in an endeavor to force him into opera? Too absurd to consider—and yet, the idea had become an obsession with her, such a fool obsession. If he were to give up the ministry he would practise medicine. Knowing his determination not to give his time to church finances, had she concluded that he would resign his pastorate before he would consent to work for the money needed to secure the gift? Incredible and yet—never before had she shown the faintest interest in the public good.

He walked on slowly, thinking, weighing, doubting. Did her son-in-law know of the Contessa’s strategy—always supposing that it was strategy?

Hugh Randolph had held aloof from the church. Even after he had given the carillon in memory of his mother. Why? He must realize its true relation to the community, that it was a permanent necessity. Faulty, of course, but one didn’t stand aloof from politics, industry, education, because they were faulty; one put his shoulder to the wheel and helped. Randolph must believe in a power stronger than himself. Everyone believed that. Some called it Destiny, others Force, still others Luck, some called it the Infinite, some called it—God.

Perhaps now that his daughter had come to live with him—his daughter! Christopher’s memory flashed a close-up of Jean Randolph in her yellow and black roadster at the Crossroads. Once he had seen a great spectacle spring into life at the light touch of a man’s hand on a button. It had been that way with him. He had known that she was frightened by the dilated pupils of her brilliant dark eyes, by the quiver of her mobile lips which she had tried to steel to haughty disdain. The hint of terror had sent a whole new set of emotions thrumming through him. Anger at her criminal recklessness, a leaping response to her beauty, an outrageous desire to hold her close till her shaken nerves quieted. And she had said that she hated a man, who under the guise of church catered to a lot of silly, sentimental women. He would make her take that back.

Catered! To the women of his congregation! A laugh swept the thoughtful shadows from his eyes. The absurdity of the charge. As a whole they were neither silly nor sentimental, he liked them, but, if only she knew how he maneuvered to escape them; how he tried to treat them with equal courtesy and attention. It was growing increasingly difficult. They demanded so much of his time. Immensely as he enjoyed tennis and golf he couldn’t spend all his leisure on those two sports, nor was he physically able to drink gallons of tea. Lately Sue Calvin had kept fresh flowers on his study table at the church. They were beautiful, always pink, carnations, roses, snap-dragons, chrysanthemums, but, whenever he looked at them he felt an uncomfortable, premonitory prickle. Several times he’d given them away, only to find the slender vase freshly supplied the next morning. He wasn’t dumb enough to think that she or any of the others were in love with him—it was just—what the dickens made them run after him like a lot of silly sheep?

He turned into a trail which wound through woods up to a shoulder of the hill. From there he could look down upon the river with its twin isles, upon fields striped by narrow brooks, far off to the white fall of the dam, to loping hills, up to the spreading Randolph home looming above Hollyhock House like an overlord. It was his retreat. The only place in which he was safe from interruption. Flat on his back, arms under his head, the blue sky over him, he could think things through. Or, he could lock himself into the nestling log cabin to which Hugh Randolph had given him a key. To be sure he shared the retreat with Sally-May and her pals, but the children were at school when he wanted it. It had been Jean Randolph’s play house when she was a little girl. Jean—he stopped. Stared down at the wisp of rose and white georgette in the path as though it had been an adder. A handkerchief—of sorts. Rose and white! That meant Sue Calvin. She affected red shades from pale pink to deepest crimson. Once in the early days of his pastorate he had told her of the lure the cabin had for him when perplexed. She had known that his conference with the Standing Committee would bristle with opposition. Had she divined that he would come here? He couldn’t, he wouldn’t talk with her in his present frame of mind. This ensemble age had its uses. Like knights of old a woman was recognizable now by her colors.

He wheeled. With the caution and delicacy he might have observed were he tip-toeing over a field of eggs he descended the trail. Even as he neared the road he maintained his stealthy tread. He stopped as a soft voice hailed:

“Yoo-hoo! Why are you gum-shoeing down the hill, Chris?”

Fanchon Farrell was watching him from her shabby sedan. Christopher swallowed an exclamation of exasperation. Laughed.

“In the exercise of due care, as the courts call it. The last time I came swinging down the trail I stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

Fanchon giggled.

“All hornets are not winged. Methinks I hear some buzzing like mad this minute in the directors’ room at the bank. Never mind how I know. I wasn’t born yesterday. Jump in and I’ll give you a lift.” As he hesitated she added:

“Sue Calvin’s roadster is parked ahead. I suspect that she’s enjoying the view from the cabin. Coming?”

Christopher met her laughing eyes. He liked Fanchon Farrell. Grinned in response. Confided as he stepped into the car:

“I’ve walked enough today to preserve my boyish figure. I’ll ride.”