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EVERYBODY agreed that Henry Gilbert was a “good” man. It was the highest praise his friends could offer and the worst thing his enemies could find to say about him. The verbal quotation marks with which people surrounded the adjective indicated pretty correctly the type of man he was and the regard in which they held him. In the mouths of the highly virtuous the unnecessary emphasis applied to that word “good” sounded vaguely defiant—it was both an apology and a defense—upon the scornful lips of those not so highly virtuous it amounted almost to a taunt.

Henry Gilbert was honest, energetic, and devout, also he was intolerant, bigoted, and rich. Naturally, he was the most unpopular man in town. Those zealous citizens of Hopewell, mainly women and clergymen, who were known as “the uplifters” and who made it their business to pry into the local doings of Satan, respected Gilbert and deferred to him, but none of them ever by any chance addressed him as “Hank” or “Gill” or even “Henry”; neither did they call upon him at his home except on behalf of some of the numerous betterment movements in which they were mutually interested. He had never had a chum.

That, of course, is a penalty suffered by the pure. The man without a vice is a man without a pal. Blameless men are privileged to cast all the stones they desire, but other people engaged in the same occupation usually give them plenty of room for fear of being hit, inadvertently. Accidents will happen, you know.

The average man in Henry Gilbert’s position would have found life rather dull, rather disappointing—quite a lonesome affair indeed. But not he. In the first place, he was not an average man: he was far above the average in every way, as he often told himself. He was, in fact, a practically perfect creation.

This blissful frame of mind was, likewise, in complete accord with Nature’s law of balance and her mercy. No man can feel a lack of human contact, of love, of sympathy, and of understanding when inside of him the springs of righteousness gush a steady stream of self-satisfaction. Ever since Gilbert had been old enough and tall enough to look over the top of a bureau and into a looking-glass he had been blessed by a soul-satisfying complacency.

He had always been good-looking; he had never experienced a sick day and he had lived temperately. Now at fifty years of age he was the handsomest man in the state. He was tall, erect, and vigorous; he had a heavy head of white hair which he kept soft and silky and well perfumed; he wore a closely clipped silver beard and mustache both of which were unstained by tobacco. His teeth were like gleaming china; his moist, red lips had never been profaned by the touch of rum—all beverages of a spirituous nature, by the way, he called “rum”—and his skin was as fine and as smooth as that of a girl. It was his boast that any child, yes, the purest maiden, could kiss him without fear of contamination. Oddly enough, it was a prophylactic privilege of which neither the children nor the young women availed themselves.

Physically Mr. Gilbert was exactly the type of man which a man of his type admires, and when he studied his own moral image the result was no less pleasing. He was thoroughly good. It was a source of poignant regret to him that there were so few people like him, but he had discovered, alas! that the world is a wicked place peopled with an enormous number of sinners and a considerably smaller number of merely frail and erring mortals. To the saving of these he had of late years devoted his spare time. He often complained because his business prevented him from spending his entire time and energy at this agreeable occupation, but to efficiently manage a large manufacturing concern is a task for any man and the second million is often more difficult to lay by than the first million.

A person so blessed as he should have been happy as well as contented, but he was far from happy and he was contented only with himself. To some of his fellow workers in the uplift organizations that he headed he occasionally confessed to a great discouragement and spoke sadly but with Christian resignation about his “crown of thorns.” Most of his associates were women— fidgety, unsatisfied women with dewlaps—and they assumed that he referred to his family, which he did. Being women of that sort, they could not be expected to approve of a woman like Mrs. Gilbert or a girl like Edith.

Just to prove how badly out of joint the world really is, however, their disapproval was by no means general; on the contrary, most of the people in Hopewell—here, as elsewhere, the morally pure were in the hopeless minority—liked Henry Gilbert’s wife ten times better than they liked him, and as for his daughter, the young men and women with whom she went were frankly crazy about her. They actually sympathized with the two women for having a psalm-shouting, fatuous, old fool for a husband and father and wondered how it had come about.

Edith herself one day asked her mother some such question. It was upon her return from the Country Club where she had that afternoon played in the semi-final round of a mixed foursomes tournament. She stormed into her mother’s room, flung herself into a chair, and inquired, furiously:

“Say, Mims! What ails papa, anyhow? Is he human or—or just divine?”

“What has happened now?” Mrs. Gilbert looked up from her work.

“Dicky Young and I won our match today. We’ve got the best sort of chance to walk off with the trophy tomorrow, but papa has—forbidden me to play! Imagine it! I’ve got to default— throw the match!”

Mrs. Gilbert flushed—she had a lovely, sensitive face. “My dear! I don’t understand—”

“He saw my new golf suit!” Edith indicated her smart linen knickers. “Evidently he has always assumed that I wear skirts to conceal the disgraceful fact that I have legs—my trunk is supposed to hang on the end of invisible wires, or something. Anyhow he was horrified to discover that I’m a biped. I stopped in at the office and ran right into a meeting of the ‘Holier-Than-Thous.’ That abominable Miss Galloway was there and I fascinated her as a serpent fascinates a bird. She’d never seen a good-looking pair of legs. When the meeting was over papa started moaning. You know—the usual stuff! He was shocked; he was pained. A daughter of his immodestly exposing her limbs —yes, he called them ‘limbs’! That fast Country Club set had corrupted me. Rum-drinking young men and cigarette-smoking girls! He hit the ceiling when I explained that nearly all the girls wear knickers.”

“I was afraid he’d object to that suit,” Mrs. Gilbert sighed.

“I may have been a little bit snippy,” Edith confessed. “It’s so hard not to be superior to people like him and—he is such a trial. Anyhow, he ‘preferred’ that I withdraw from the tournament and he kept on preferring even after I offered to wear a sport skirt. You know what it means when he ‘prefers’ a thing. Dicky will be furious and—I’m right on my game, too. This thing is becoming intolerable, Mims. I simply can’t stand it any more. And I won’t!”

The mother nodded wearily. “I’ll have a talk with him tonight. Perhaps I can win him over.”

Edith’s blue eyes were shining defiantly; her face was flushed; she spoke in a tone of dark resentment. “I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve about reached the—” She paused, swallowed, then shook her head in hopeless perplexity. “I can’t make him out. I’ve never seen a person so odiously, so offensively good as he is. And the worst of it is he’s getting ‘better’! He’s the most cordially disliked man in Hopewell. Even you must feel it.”

“Feel it!” exclaimed Mrs. Gilbert.

“I can’t understand how I happen to be his daughter or whatever induced you to marry him.”

“He wasn’t always like this,” the elder woman said. “He was different from the men I knew. I was tired, bewildered—I guess I was frightened, too. Everybody told me I had a good voice, but I couldn’t seem to get anywhere with it and New York is a dreadful city for a friendless girl. You wouldn’t understand. He was clean, decent; handsome, too—”

“Good Lord! How I hate handsome men!” Edith viciously kicked her slim legs.

“He was well off, even then, and he offered me everything I longed for. That wasn’t what made me do it, of course; I really loved him. I know what you’re going through, my dear. He put me through the same thing. We’re very much alike, you and I. But he’s a good man; he means to do right. Perhaps it’s my fault that you’re not more like him than me.”

“How he ever had a daughter, I can’t imagine,” the girl exclaimed. “He’s so horrified at anything sexy! I’ll bet he was terribly ashamed.”

Mrs. Gilbert smiled, laughed. “That’s not as absurd as it sounds. We never had another.”

“I admire his virtues. I suppose everybody does. And he’s a smart business man, too. That’s why he’s so hard to understand. You’d think any man who can see both sides of a business proposition and who has learned to give and take could see both sides of a moral or religious question. But no. He’s granite. And outside of the business of money-making he’s a flounder—both his eyes are on one side of his head. He’s totally blind on the other. If he weren’t my father I’m afraid I’d detest him as heartily as most people do.”

“He has given you a good deal to be thankful for. At any rate, you’ll never have to go through what I went through.”

“I don’t see that he has given me so much. Think of what he has taken away from me. My music, for instance—”

“I know!” the mother acquiesced, hastily. “I had ambitions for you to accomplish what I failed in, but perhaps I was selfish. After all, we haven’t done so badly with your voice—”

“In spite of him!”

“Fortunately, I had a good teacher and I’ve been able to pass on her method. You have more talent than I had.”

“But what’s the good of it?” Edith demanded, still resentfully. “He’d never let me go on the stage, even in concert work. He thinks singers wear tights. Look at the friends I have—or rather, haven’t. Think of the places I never go, the things I never see, the people I never meet. I’m young. I’m full of life. I like adventure. I want to laugh and sing and dance and play.”

“Of course. So did I.”

“At least you had your chance. You know what it’s like.”

“Yes, I was ‘full of life’—” Mrs. Gilbert began, musingly, but the girl ran on.

“I have good clothes, and plenty of spending money, and a car, but no will of my own, no freedom to think or to do what I choose or to cultivate the people I like or to make something out of myself. I’m a prisoner. I’m smothered. But I’ll get my breath, you see if I don’t. What’s more, I’ll play in those finals tomorrow. I’d play if I had to wear hoop-skirts and a bustle. However, I don’t propose to let him make me ridiculous. I’ll wear these knickers, and if he steals ’em I’ll play barelegged!”

Edith did play on the following day, and she wore her chic, new suit. Henry Gilbert heard about it, of course, and he would have clashed with her had not her mother voluntarily taken the blame. It was not the first time Mrs. Gilbert had intervened thus, had tried to explain, to argue, to convince, and finally to excuse. Just what sort of scene occurred between husband and wife on this occasion Edith never learned, but there was weariness, discouragement, almost a look of misery in the mother’s eyes when it was over. Later she asked Edith to lay aside the costume that had given offense, and this the girl did readily enough. Her mother’s lightest wish was law to her.

For fully a week after that incident Mr. Gilbert did not speak to his wife except in the daughter’s presence.

This episode of the golf suit was typical of many, and Edith had not exaggerated her feeling of discontent, of frustration. From her mother she had inherited a really splendid voice and under the latter’s instruction she had worked hard to develop it. It was a voice that Hopewell took pride in, and as it had matured certain ambitions of its owner had taken shape. But with those ambitions Mr. Gilbert was entirely out of sympathy. If Edith chose to become a choir singer or to teach vocal music, well and good, but as for appearing professionally before the footlights he refused even to consider such a thing. From the concert platform to the stage was but a step, and no daughter of his would ever become a painted Jezebel of the theater. Theatrical people were loose and immoral; the theater itself was a device of Satan. If he forbade his daughter to attend the theater, how could he countenance her becoming an actress? Actress! The very word was a hissing upon the lips of decent people.

Dancing and card-playing were sinful occupations, too; more destructive of the moral fiber even than theater going. It seemed to Edith as if anything in the way of amusement was an offense in her father’s nostrils and as if everything that young people enjoyed doing was improper, if not actually wicked, in his eyes. It was quite a tribute to her personality that she had attained popularity in the younger set despite the prohibitions with which she was hedged about, but, if the truth must be told, she did not respect very carefully those prohibitions and her friends had joined her in a sort of joyous conspiracy to defeat them.

Mrs. Gilbert, too, was oftentimes her ally. When, for instance, a really good play came to Hopewell she and Edith usually managed to see it, and frequently they went to motion pictures. This despite the fact that Gilbert was president of the Purity League and the League had voted that pictures were a pernicious influence and an incitement to lawlessness and lust. Privately Mrs. Gilbert scoffed at this.

“Moving pictures don’t incite me to lawlessness and I can’t believe they’ll arouse anything very evil in you,” she told her daughter. “Some pictures, I’ll admit, aren’t very nice, but you’re a young woman, not a child. To the pure all things are pure—”

“Oh no, Mims!” Edith asserted, positively. “To the pure all things are rotten.”

“Anyhow, I don’t intend to let your father and his Miss Galloways crush the youth and the romance out of you. I wouldn’t deliberately hurt his feelings and I try to respect his views on important matters, but—we’ll see all the good picture plays we have a chance to see.”

This they proceeded to do.

But as time went on Henry Gilbert’s prejudice against this form of entertainment grew and his attitude changed from one of mere disapproval to an active and vigorous opposition. There was a reason for this. His pet social-betterment projects had progressed very well, the various local reform movements in which he had taken part were in a fair way to succeed and, more important by far, prohibition was no longer a dream, but a dazzling actuality. As a result Mr. Gilbert and his earnest-minded cohorts were, in a manner of speaking, out of a job. They were faced with the alternative of finding a new dragon to slay or of permitting their swords to rust in their scabbards. The public’s breath had been purified, so to speak, but its body was beset by other ills and of these perhaps motion pictures was the worst, the most insidious. So, at least, Gilbert convinced himself. With all the exultant fervor that is born of every new crusade he began war against the screen. He rallied his forces, he enlisted clergymen, he appeared before their congregations, before women’s societies and mothers’ clubs, and he exposed the growing menace of the silent drama. Motion pictures, he told them, were vulgar and salacious and by reason of their unhealthy appeal to the young they were indirectly responsible for the alarming increase of crime. They had ripped aside the veil of modesty and exposed all of the hideous and demoralizing secrets of sex. The industry itself was dominated by mercenary men who deliberately pandered to the basest passions of their audiences in order to enrich themselves. By their greed, by their criminal disregard of decency, they were making a mock of virtue, they were destroying American ideals, betraying the sanctity of American home life and corrupting American youth. Gilbert had a lot like this to say and there was nobody to deny him, so the movement grew.

He swung all of the welfare organizations into line behind him and induced the State Federation of Churches to indorse his views. He voiced a demand for a rigorous state censorship of films and drafted a bill providing for it. He it was who really forced that bill through the Legislature.

He was a clever politician and a skillful lobbyist; at the several hearings he went to the Capitol and, as the mouthpiece for the six hundred thousand indignant members of the Federation, he spoke in behalf of the measure.

Miss Galloway took an active part in the fight, and she, too, spoke. She represented the State League of Mothers’ Clubs. She was not a mother, to be sure, but she had “a mother’s heart” and the tears she shed over the erring children who had been led astray by the wicked, crime-inciting, sex-provoking films were “mother’s tears.”

Her speech deeply affected Henry Gilbert and he wondered afterwards why Belle Galloway had been denied the actual joys of motherhood of which she had spoken so feelingly. He had often asked himself why she remained unmarried, for she was still young—not more than thirty-five—and, unlike most of the other women reform workers with whom he came in contact, she was physically attractive. She was a strong, healthy, intense person, full bosomed and well proportioned. What is more, she radiated a peculiar, indefinable animal magnetism; at least Gilbert felt it very strongly when he was near her. And she was good-looking. She had black hair, her skin was dark, and beneath her somber eyes were deep shadows, sooty smudges which he considered extremely alluring.

Certainly there was no good physiological reason for a woman like her to remain an old maid. He decided finally that she must be keenly conscious of that distressing sex appeal which was inherent in her and that it offended her finer nature—the spiritual side of her. Some women were like that. But it was a pity. She had such emotional possibilities. She would make such a splendid wife for some good, clean man.

That struggle for censorship turned into quite a bitter fight and Gilbert was put to it to win. But win he did, as usual. Right was triumphant, virtue prevailed. However, it took a lot of money. Henry Gilbert thanked God that he had the money to spend and knew how and where to spend it so as to do the most good.

Even after the bill had passed, the Governor was reluctant to sign it, but through a fortuitous chain of circumstances Gilbert found himself in a position to put the screws to him and to force a signature. The Chief Executive, it so happened, was in private life a competitor of his, and—the details of their undertaking were never reduced to writing and they agreed to retain them as a secret between themselves.

Gilbert, however, could not refrain from breaching that confidence enough to tell Miss Galloway how he had forced the Governor’s hand; she was always so interested in his triumphs. She was deeply stirred by his account and frankly expressed her admiration for his skill and his determination. Her approval had come to mean a good deal to Gilbert lately, no doubt because they were in such sympathy.

“The way you conducted this fight is wonderful,” she told him with an enthusiasm she reserved for him alone. “Simply wonderful! Our children and our children’s children will bless the name of Henry Gilbert.”

“My dear child,” he protested, “the victory is as much yours as mine. I was merely the leader; you were my most able adjutant. Napoleon, you know, owed his military success to his genius for selecting good generals. But it is nice to hear a word of praise from one who is sincere—from one who understands. It is about my only reward.”

“You would have made as great a leader as Napoleon,” Miss Galloway said, earnestly. “You have the ability to fire us weaker people with your zeal, with your faith in the right.”

“Tut! Tut!” Her pleased listener beamed; he ran a soft, well-manicured hand over his silver beard. “You’re a flatterer, Belle. You spoil me. If there were more enthusiasts like you our struggle wouldn’t be so long drawn out.”

“Have I helped you?” she inquired.

“My dear!” Gilbert leaned forward and laid his hand over hers. It was a pleasing little familiarity which he permitted himself; it emphasized their intimacy and he liked to touch her—in a perfectly respectful manner. “Without your support I’d have become discouraged long ago. You’re the only person who seems to be in accord with me. At home—” The speaker sighed and shook his head.

Miss Galloway’s lips parted; she lowered her glowing dark eyes. “I—have a name for you, all of my own,” she confessed. “I wonder if you’d like to hear it.”

“Indeed I would.”

“You won’t laugh? You won’t think I’m—sentimental?”

Henry Gilbert was at this moment in an exultant mood; he answered recklessly:

“I certainly shall. I always have considered you sentimental. Deeply sentimental. You can’t fool me, my girl.” He wagged a finger at her. Some subtle change that leaped into his hearer’s face suddenly smote him with apprehension. He feared he had offended her, so he said, hastily: “That’s a sincere compliment. You are a woman of reserve—your strength of character is your finest quality, but back of it I know you have a beautiful, warm soul.”

The woman flushed more deeply. “Thank you. Well, then, I call you my—our ‘plumed knight.’ You are so firm, so fearless, so unwavering. ‘Sans peur et sans reproche.’ It is an inspiration to work with a man like you.”

Gilbert radiated pleasure; he thanked his companion for her compliment. He felt no inclination to laugh, for, as a matter of fact, he had called himself very much the same thing, as he now told her. By and by he said: “But to get back to that bill, my dear. As you know, it provides for one woman on the board of review. I wrote in that provision with a certain person in mind and I told the Governor that I proposed to name her myself. I have. There is only one woman in whose hands I would trust the moral welfare of the next generation of this state—Belle Galloway of Hopewell!”

“Me!” the woman cried.

“Exactly! It is a position of trust and you can make it one of great influence. It pays rather well, too; thirty-five hundred a year, to begin with. I think I can promise that the salary will be increased.” He winked and smiled benignantly. “Salaries of political appointees have a way of growing when some one of influence is interested in seeing them grow. You understand?”

“I—don’t know what to say,” Miss Galloway confessed. “The salary is an inducement, of course. You know my position: we who labor in the Lord’s vineyard—” She hesitated, flushed again, then paled. “It means I’d have to leave Hopewell and go to the city, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I— We couldn’t— We’d have to give up our work together.”

“Right. I thought of that, but you deserve a reward. You can accomplish a great good. I think it is your duty to—”

Miss Galloway interrupted in a tone Gilbert had never heard her use. “I can’t. I’d rather stay here. It was sweet of you to think of me and I thank you, but— No! No! Please!” She averted her face suddenly; her bosom heaved.

Gilbert felt a queer excitement stir within him; his pulse leaped and his breath caught unaccountably, but he lacked the courage to analyze his emotion. He did trust himself to say:

“Of course I’d hate to see you go. I’d feel lost here alone. Without you to support me I’m afraid I’d falter; nevertheless—” The speaker’s tongue had been running on of its own accord, he was disappointed and yet relieved when his secretary entered with some papers for his desk. When she had gone he was once more his usual self. Miss Galloway, too, had recovered her customary poise.

“I do thank you,” she repeated, earnestly, “but my work is here. Perhaps I can accomplish something in my own small way. At any rate, I have you for an inspiration.” She smiled and rose to go. Gilbert accompanied her to the door. There she hesitated, then said, regretfully: “Isn’t it a pity that Mrs. Gilbert is so out of sympathy with our work? She could be such a help.”

“It is indeed. I’m afraid she has a worldly way of—”

“I’m so fond of her. And I admire her so. Your daughter, too. It’s too much to expect them to join our crusade, but if only they wouldn’t show their disapproval. Of course, they’re perfectly innocent—”

“In what way, Belle? Disapproval of what?”

“Why, of our war against indecent films, for instance. Mrs. Gilbert could set such a splendid example, if she would. But as you say she has her own views.”

“Has she shown disapproval?”

Miss Galloway fell into confusion; in some distress she murmured: “Oh, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have spoken. I wouldn’t think of criticizing her, you understand.” When the husband insisted upon a fuller explanation, she reluctantly said: “Why, it’s simply that she has been patronizing some of the very pictures we denounce—while the fight was actually in progress. Not that they could hurt a mature woman like her—a woman of her experience and strength of character—but Edith is young and everybody knows her. It’s the example. That abominable picture ‘Silken Savages,’ for instance. I saw them coming out. Of course they haven’t stopped to think how it looks. But it is a pity, isn’t it? Especially with you fighting almost single-handed—”

“Hm-m!” Gilbert frowned. “I shall have to speak to Alice. As you say, she doesn’t stop to think.”

“Precisely! I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I’d thought you didn’t know. But I’m so in earnest; the work is so vital. I’m so closely in sympathy with your ideas!”

When his caller had gone Henry Gilbert continued to frown. So Alice was maintaining her attitude of indifference to his desires, nay, actually showing defiance of them. It was intolerable. No wonder Edith, their daughter, was a problem. It was enough to grieve Belle Galloway.

Belle—! There was a woman. Unconsciously Gilbert straightened his shoulders, stroked his beard, cast an approving glance at his reflection in the mirror. Yes, set in the mahogany paneling of his private office was a full-length pier glass.

He was still deeply astonished at her refusal to accept that position as state censor; he was especially astonished at the manner of her refusal and what it implied. As he pondered it now he again experienced that queer feeling of suppressed excitement. Was the woman sincere? He dismissed that question at once. She was too good, too pure to dissemble. No, he had surprised her into a confession. People called her a cold, emotionless creature. Ha! That’s all they knew about it. Volcanoes are cold, too, on the surface, but inside is molten lava. He was a good deal like that, but of course he had the strength of character to hold the fires in check. He was a married man. Alas! yes, a man married to a woman utterly out of sympathy with him and one who deliberately trod upon his most sacred convictions! It was time he had an understanding with her.

He put on his overcoat and hat and once more complacently eyed himself in the glass. Her “plumed knight!” That was very sweet and touching, but he really was a knightly figure, with his tall, clean, straight body, his handsome, ruddy face, and that fine head of silver hair. He examined his hair more carefully, ran his fingers through it. That new barber was careless; he had clipped it too short. Hair like that was more becoming if worn a shade longer.