A BELATED MARTYRDOM

The rectory at Edom was hot with the fever of preparation.  The invitation to preach at St. Antipas meant an offer of that parish should the preaching be approved.  It was a most desirable parish ­Browett’s city church being as smart as one of his steam yachts or his private train (for nothing less than a train sufficed him now ­though there were those of the green eyes who pretended to remember, with heavy sarcasm, the humbler day when he had but a beggarly private car, coupled to the rear of a common Limited).  It was, moreover, a high church, its last rector having been put away for the narrowness of refusing to “enrich the service.”  This was the church and this the patron above all others that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford would have chosen, and earnestly did he pray that God in His wisdom impart to him the grace to please Browett and those whom Browett permitted to have a nominal voice in the control of St. Antipas.

Both Aunt Bell and Nancy came to feel the strain of it all.  The former promised to “go into the silence” each day and “hold the thought of success,” thereby drawing psychic power for him from the Reservoir of the Eternal.

Nancy could only encourage by wifely sympathy, being devoid of those psychic powers that distinguished Aunt Bell.  Tenderly she hovered about Allan the morning he began to write the first of the three sermons he was to preach.

As for him, though heavy with the possibilities of the moment, he was yet cool and centred; resigned to what might be, yet hopeful; his manner was determined, yet gentle, almost sweet ­the manner of one who has committed all to God and will now put no cup from him, how bitter soever.

“I am so hopeful, dearest, for your sake,” his wife said, softly, wishing to reveal her sympathy yet fearful lest she might obtrude it.  He was arranging many sheets of notes before him.

“What will the first one be?” she asked.  He straightened in his chair.

“I’ve made up my mind, Nance!  It’s a wealthy congregation ­one of the wealthiest in the city ­but I shall preach first from the parable of Dives and Lazarus.”

“Isn’t that ­a little ­wouldn’t something else do as well ­something that wouldn’t seem quite so personal?”

He smiled up with fond indulgence.  “That’s the woman of it ­concession for temporal advantage.”  Then more seriously he added, “I wouldn’t be true to myself, Nance, if I went down there in any spirit of truckling to wealth.  Public approval is a most desirable luxury, I grant you ­wealth and ease are desirable luxuries, and the favour of those in power ­but they’re only luxuries.  And I know in this matter but one real necessity:  my own self-approval.  If consciously I preached a polite sermon there, my own soul would accuse me and I should be as a leaf in the wind for power.  No, Nance ­never urge me to be untrue to that divine Christ-self within me!  If I cannot be my best self before God, I am nothing.  I must preach Christ and Him crucified, whether it be to the wealthy of St. Antipas or only to believing poverty.”

Stung with contrition, she was quick to say, “Oh, my dearest, I didn’t mean you to be untrue!  Only it seemed unnecessary to affront them in your very first sermon.”

“I have been divinely guided, Nance.  No considerations of expediency can deflect me now.  This had to be!  I admit that I had my hour of temptation ­but that has gone, and thank God my integrity survives it.”

“Oh, how much bigger you are than I am, dearest!” She looked down at him proudly as she stood close to his side, smoothing the tawny hair.  Then she laid one finger along his lips and made the least little kissing noise with her own lips ­a trick of affection learned in the early days of their love.  After a little she stole from his side, leaving him with head bent in prayerful study ­to be herself alone with her new assurance.

It was moments like this that she had come to long for and to feed her love upon.  Nor need it be concealed that there had not been one such for many months.  The situation had been graver than she was willing to acknowledge to herself.  Not only had she not ceased to wonder since the first days of her marriage, but she had begun to smile in her wonder, fancying from time to time that certain plain answers came to it ­and not at all realising that a certain kind of smile is love’s unforgivable blasphemy; conscious only that the smile left a strange hurt in her heart.

For a little hour she stayed alone with her joy, fondly turning the light of her newly fed faith upon an idol whose clearness of line and purity of tint had become blurred in a dusk of wondering ­an idol that had begun, she now realised with a shudder, to bulk almost grotesquely through that deepening gloom of doubt.

Now all was well again.  In this new light the dear idol might even at times show a dual personality ­one kneeling beside her very earnestly to worship the other with her.  Why not, since the other showed itself truly worthy of adoration?  With faith made new in her husband ­and, therefore, in God ­she went to Aunt Bell.

She found that lady in touch with the cosmic forces, over her book, “The Beautiful Within,” her particular chapter being headed, “Psychology of Rest:  Rhythms and Sub-rhythms of Activity and Repose; their Synchronism with Subliminal Spontaneity.”  Over this frank revelation of hidden truths Aunt Bell’s handsome head was, for the moment, nodding in sub-rhythms of psychic placidity ­a state from which Nancy’s animated entrance sufficed to arouse her.  As the proud wife spoke, she divested herself of the psychic restraint with something very like a carnal yawn behind her book.

“Oh, Aunt Bell!  Isn’t Allan fine!  Of course, in a way, it’s too bad ­doubtless he’ll spoil his chances for the thing I know he’s set his heart upon ­and he knows it, too ­but he’s going calmly ahead as if the day for martyrs to the truth hadn’t long since gone by.  Oh, dear, martyrs are so dowdy and out-of-date ­but there he is, a great, noble, beautiful soul, with a sense of integrity and independence that is stunning!”

“What has Allan been saying now?” asked Aunt Bell, curiously unmoved.

“Said? It’s what he’s doing! The dear, big, stupid thing is going down there to preach the very first Sunday about Dives and Lazarus ­the poor beggar in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man down below, you remember?” she added, as Aunt Bell seemed still to hover about the centre of psychic repose.

“Well?”

“Well, think of preaching that primitive doctrine to any one in this age ­then think of a young minister talking it to a church of rich men and expecting to receive a call from them!”

Aunt Bell surveyed the plump and dimpled whiteness of her small hands with more than her usual studious complacence.  “My dear,” she said at last, “no one has a greater admiration for Allan than I have ­but I’ve observed that he usually knows what he’s about.”

“Indeed, he knows what he’s about now, Aunt Bell!” There was a swift little warmth in her tones ­“but he says he can’t do otherwise.  He’s going deliberately to spoil his chances for a call to St. Antipas by a piece of mere early-Christian quixotism.  And you must see how great he is, Aunt Bell.  Do you know ­there have been times when I’ve misjudged Allan.  I didn’t know his simple genuineness.  He wants that church, yet he will not, as so many in his place would do, make the least concession to its people.”

Aunt Bell now brought a coldly critical scrutiny to bear upon one small foot which she thrust absently out until its profile could be seen.

“Perhaps he will have his reward,” she said.  “Although it is many years since I broadened into what I may call the higher unbelief, I have never once suspected, my dear, that merit fails of its reward.  And above all, I have faith in Allan, in his ­well, his psychic nature is so perfectly attuned with the Universal that Allan simply cannot harm himself.  Even when he seems deliberately to invite misfortune, fortune comes instead.  So cheer up, and above all, practise going into the silence and holding the thought of success for him.  I think Allan will attend very acceptably to the mere details.”