DEAD IDOLS

Arnold Imrie was of clear Scotch descent. And among his forebears had been those grim Covenanters to whom compromise was anathema. He had a strong body and a strong intellect, but stronger than both combined was the resistless overlord he called his conscience. Sydney Smith’s aspersions upon the impenetrability of the Scotch skull are well known, though their justice may be questioned. But it is indisputable that nothing short of the heroic measures he recommended would suffice to separate Imrie from a resolve, once firmly made. Being human, he saw many things dimly, and some quite falsely. But as he saw he lived, and there was no power in the earth or out of it to make him evade or equivocate. Sometimes this sturdy candour made him noble: sometimes it made him tiresome: and once in a way it merely made him ridiculous. But though for long periods it might remain dormant, it was none the less the prime impetus in his life.

Judith’s derision, her more or less obvious contempt, had wounded him more than he would have believed possible; and her touch, though light, had found spots that were sorer than he had suspected. Her calm disdain was like an acid, dissolving away the crust of unimportant occupation and meticulous conformity which had protected his ideals from the corruptive action of reality. He shivered, figuratively, at the revelation.

One of her mordant phrases was poignantly clear. Again and again it recurred to him, always with a question attached. He tried to dismiss it, and could not. She had called him “too much of a clergyman not enough of a man.” As he walked home, he analysed its meaning, and tried to disguise it in sophistries. But the intellectual honesty which was his at base, forbade. The meaning was far too manifest. And at intervals through the week, he strove to force his thoughts into an effective answer. But always there was failure at the end.

Of course such charges as she had made to him were not new. The literature of the day was full of them. But hitherto he had been able to keep his defences intact. When his own logic failed him, there was always the logic of his schooling and of his contemporaries upon which to fall back. But for such hérésies to spring from Judith that was treachery within the gates. He resented it bitterly, and he was appalled as the weapons so strong in the past now crumpled in his hands.

A whisper grew louder and louder in his soul, a question sounded more and more relentlessly. And when it would brook no more delay, reluctantly, sick at heart, and filled with fear at the outcome, he hauled down his flag of truce and gave the devil battle.

It was well after midnight of Saturday when the last gun was fired, and the struggle was over. With lips compressed, and brow furrowed, and with his tongue parched by the pipes he had smoked, Imrie capitulated.

On the morrow he would put his life to the test.

But when he stood in the pulpit and faced his congregation, awaiting him with courteous expectancy, as it had waited so often, his heart well-nigh failed him. Slowly he let his eyes rove over the throng, brilliant in costume, exuding the indefinable aroma of power and luxury. These men and women of St. Viateur’s were the cream of the community. It was no small thing to be the shepherd of such a flock. The silence grew oppressive, while he hesitated. He seemed to look for someone. Finally he found what he sought. His face hardened and his teeth clicked so sharply that those in the pews near at hand could almost hear the sound. Judith was in a seat well back in the church. Good was beside her. Imrie’s task had suddenly become far harder, yet even more imperative. He hesitated no longer.

He cleared his throat and his eyes wandered, raptly, as of old, into the dim vastness of the rafters. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword,” he said impressively. “Text taken from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, tenth chapter, thirty-fourth verse.”

He paused at that point, as he had paused Sundays without end, and the congregation, as if at a signal, seemed to settle back and make itself resignedly comfortable against the duty it faced. There was a subdued but general coughing, and the whispering rustle of silks: then a calm hush.

But the preacher had not uttered a dozen words before the expectant quiet changed sensibly. It was not his words which caused the change, but his tone. And it was not that his tone was dramatic, but that it was not. The very fact that he spoke with a complete freedom from anything histrionic presented a contrast which amazed.

But as the significance of the lesson he was drawing from the text became clear to them, astonishment gave place to an almost ominous, certainly an unsympathetic, attention.

Never in his career had he had more heedful listeners. As if magically, the news seemed to have percolated to the most obtuse intelligences that grave matters were transpiring. Once or twice there was a sibilant inrush of breath from some auditor too dumfounded for control. But for the rest there was utter silence. There was not a rustle nor a cough. The congregation of St. Viateur’s had changed its character. It was playing a different rôle. It was as if an epicure had bitten caviar and tasted quinine. It waited.

Meanwhile, the Reverend Arnold Imrie was recording his new-found belief that the peace of Christ was not a complacent acceptance of earthly misery, but a dynamic struggle against the few who dispossessed or would dispossess the many; that the Man of Sorrows was a rebel, seeking, not to bring men to heaven, but heaven to men; that he brought a sword, sharp-pointed for the blood of injustice, for which, injustice, terrified, crucified him; and he was asking, very simply but very clearly, whether the charge of heretics that time had brought about a change between preaching Christ and preaching dogma, was true.

He went calmly on, opening, though they never suspected it, the innermost chambers of his heart to them, taking them into his confidence as he had never before taken even himself. For the first time, he did not preach: it was rather a mutual inventory before the God they worshipped, a dispassionate analysis of the institutions they revered, to see if, since they had become idols, they had deteriorated or no.

Only once did his emotionless manner desert him. Then without euphemism, he lashed them for their luxuries, for the repletion of their bellies, for the ideals of the spirit that they had allowed to die of starvation. For a few minutes he waxed eloquent and bitter and cruel. With a crash of his fist on the pulpit rail he repeated the words, “let him take up his cross and follow me,” and hammered home to them, with brutal logic and remorseless clarity, what they meant.

It was a new Jesus which he painted for them, in bold sharp strokes. The Lamb of God, the doe-eyed martyr to vicarious atonement, vanished, and in his place stood a virile battler for human rights.

The strongest sentiment in the minds of the listeners was one of bewilderment. They watched, with something approaching admiration, the portrait as it grew more vivid before their eyes, and a few even admitted in it a specious fidelity. But none could comprehend at all clearly the reason for their rector’s complete and sudden estrangement from the conceptions which he had worshipped hitherto with an orthodoxy beyond suspicion.

And yet the explanation was profoundly simple. In the first place he had come away from his talk with Judith to study Scripture with new eyes. In words so familiar that he could quote them he had found new meaning. He had realised, with a shock, that always until then he had given a superficial acceptance to the interpretations of others, and in natural consequence he had set himself to the business of interpretation assisted by nothing but his own powers of logic and analysis. Once the new keystone was placed, the change in the entire arch was inevitable and immediate. He had only to secure a new postulate: the rest of the syllogism followed as a matter of course.

The second part of the explanation was simpler still. From the time that man emerged from his female origin, man has been doing things, both sublime and foolish, to win the regard of woman. In the little boy who jumps off a high place because a little girl “dared” him to jump, may be found the key to Imrie’s puzzling transformation. Judith had dared him to be more man than clergyman. His eyes were fixed on her as he jumped.

There can be no doubt that he went further than he had intended when he entered the pulpit. But as speech clarifies thought, the very course of maintaining his new argument strengthened him in it, and his fears and hesitancies vanished. He left no doubt in other minds, as to his meaning, as he cleared away the doubts in his own.

Judith, listening in amazement with the rest, realised, as did few, how characteristic of him it all was. She felt that she could almost trace the steps which had brought him to this point. Her own attitude had played a large share, she felt certain. Her doubts had set up doubts in him. He had tried to dissipate them, and had failed. So far he was quite like other men. But then he had resolved to tell his congregation that he had failed. In that he was different. Other men would have waited longer, have hesitated and put off and pondered, some to the end of their lives. Not so with Imrie. A resolution once made was turned into action without delay, be the consequences what they might. The one outstanding distinction of his nature was his unfailing courage.

The whole procedure, involved and incomprehensible and distressing as she knew it must appear to most minds, was perfectly clear to her. She had put questions to him that he could not answer. So he had resolved to put them, without equivocation or delay, to his congregation. That to them these questions did not betoken honest doubt, but downright heresy, was no concern of his. They had to hear, and having heard, they had to decide what their significance was for him and for them, and for the relations between them. That he realised quite clearly that he was jeopardising his professional future, she did not for a moment doubt. But that realisation, she knew very well, would only confirm him the more strongly in his purpose.

Suddenly she realised that he was bringing his remarkable sermon to a close. His voice sank, becoming almost conversational, though it penetrated to the furthest corner of the church.

It was the closing plea of a lawyer before a jury of his peers. He had shown what he believed to be the fallacies in their relations to the Lord Jesus, and the fallacies in his own; he had shown the failure of the Church, which meant them as well as himself, to live up to its social significance; he had demonstrated with vivid brutality, the inconsistency between their professions of faith and their daily lives; he had humbled himself before his ideals and sought to make them do likewise; and now, very gently, he was asking for the verdict.

He paused for a moment before his last words, and swept the congregation with his eyes. They saw far more than was there to see. They saw his seminary days, when the world looked so simple and so enticing. They saw the early days of his charge of St. Viateur’s, when the knowledge of actual achievement was not troubled by spiritual doubts. They saw the Sundays, innumerable, when his words, received by the great ones of the community with admiration and approval, had been followed by the little flatteries to which no human heart is immune. Then a lump rose in his throat, and his gaze came nearer. Something like tears came into his eyes as he surveyed these friends whom he was deliberately transforming into something perilously like enemies for no reason save that he must. They would never understand never. And yet he must go on to the end if need be. That was his destiny.

Quietly he put his last question to them, “What are you going to do about it?” Then he closed his eyes for a moment, opened them to stare unseeing at judge and jury, sighed softly, and abruptly left the pulpit.

The answer was not long in coming. He knew that it would not be, and he dallied in the vestry, purposely. Judge Wolcott, kindly and genial, approached him with outstretched hand.

“Arnold, it was magnificent,” he said, with a paternal clap on his shoulder, adding, in an undertone, though no one was near, “but I don’t think I would repeat it.”

“Why?” asked Imrie coldly.

The Judge tugged at his white beard nervously. Then he patted the younger man again with what seemed like a somewhat exaggerated friendliness.

“Oh, come now, Arnold, don’t get on your high horse. You know what I mean. That sort of thing’s all right occasionally. But it’s juvenile....”

“Juvenile?”

“Well, perhaps not that. But it’s young, sophomoric, journalistic, sentimental you understand, I’m sure.”

“Quite.”

“We have some pretty conservative members here, you know. As laymen go, they’re powerful.” He stopped and watched Imrie, waiting for the effect of his words to sink in. “For a young man, practically at the outset of his career, to offend them would be unwise.”

Imrie’s coldness dissolved, and he smiled broadly.

“We know each other too well to fence, Judge. Let’s be frank with each other.”

“But I am frank,” cried the older man.

“Not entirely. You’re trying to reprimand me without seeming to do it.”

“Not at all. I’m merely ah advising you.”

“I see. And if I don’t choose to heed the ah advice ... what then?”

The judge lifted his finely manicured fingers and shrugged his shoulders. “You’re not a boy, Arnold. You have eyes and ears.”

Imrie laughed again, but not pleasantly.

“Is this official?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean, are you talking to me as a friend or as a vestryman?”

“My dear boy, the vestrymen are your friends.”

“Please don’t quibble. There’s the same dual personality in you that there is in me talking among friends and preaching in this pulpit. Aren’t you preparing me now as a friend for what you might have to say as a vestryman?”

“If you insist yes,” the Judge admitted, rather testily. It nettled him to be put on the defensive, his subtleness openly contemned.

“In other words,” Imrie rose from his chair and walked over to the window, where he paused for a moment. “In other words, you bear unofficial orders.”

“Not orders.”

“Advice then advice for me to preach what the people want and let what they need go hang?”

“Arnold my dear boy,” cried the Judge pacifically, following him to the window. But Imrie edged away.

“As the Spanish poet put it, ’Since the public pay ’tis just, methinks, we by their compass steer, and write the nonsense that they love to hear’;” he murmured gently.

“Really, I ” the Judge was at a loss for words. He had anticipated no such reception as this.

Imrie’s voice changed and his lips narrowed.

“You may tell the er powerful laymen Judge Wolcott, that I take my orders in these matters from my conscience, not from them.”

The older man stared at him in amazement.

“Are you crazy?” he demanded, and a light flickered in his own eyes.

“Obviously,” said Imrie shortly.

“Do you realise what this means?”

“Perfectly.”

“Are you prepared to abide by the consequences?” That the Judge was thoroughly aroused was plain. He did not like to have subordinates treat him in such fashion, and any notion that Imrie was not a subordinate was of course only a polite fiction. It was incredible that this young fool should think it anything else.

“My resignation will be in your hands this afternoon,” said Imrie quietly.

“Come, Arnold my lad,” cried the Judge, honestly dismayed by the course their conversation had taken. “You mustn’t be offended really you mustn’t. Let’s get together and discuss this like men. We....”

“There is nothing to discuss,” said Imrie with a shortness which brooked no further opening. “You have stated your case with perfect clearness. I hope I have stated mine equally so. I think that ends it.”

“My dear young friend,” said the older man with an effort at patience which only partially concealed his increasing exasperation. “I had no intention of stirring up all this excitement. I come to you with a friendly word of advice and you treat me like like a policeman! Egad, one would think I was your worst enemy.”

“I’m sorry really I....”

“Then forget it. Come we’ll take a stroll and talk about the weather. There’s a good fellow. No sense in letting a little difference of opinion make us lose our tempers.”

But behind the Judge’s conciliatory words was a secret resolve merely to wait for a more propitious moment and then to reopen the discussion with a tact, of course, acquired by experience. So, after a desultory discourse, in which he touched upon a number of obviously unimportant matters, and during which the younger man was uniformly silent, he renewed his circuitous attack. He tried very hard to be calm and judicial, but Imrie’s taciturn antagonism quite overthrew his poise. And when the clergyman remained obdurate to all his subtlest questions and cajoleries and indisputable logic, the Judge lost his temper.

“You’re an obstinate ass,” he almost shouted.

“There’s no doubt of it,” said Imrie quietly. There was of course nothing more to be said after that, so they parted, the Judge to spread the news of the incredible stubbornness of the clergyman, and Imrie to a miserable walk, alone.

He was wretched, of course. He knew perfectly well what the outcome of his folly might be. But counteracting his regret at that, was a glorious feeling of achievement, of having conquered the devil in a pitched battle, and of having emerged with no stain on his shield. To all the world, Don Quixote, slaying windmills, was an “obstinate ass,” but to Don Quixote he was a hero. Imrie’s feelings, as he battled with the wind, were a curious complex of dejection and triumph.

When he returned to his rooms, he found a message from Judith, insisting upon his presence at supper that evening. For a little he debated the acceptance of the invitation. He felt reluctant at facing her. He wondered what she would think of him. He feared that she might doubt his sincerity. But he also had a powerful curiosity as to what she would say, and her verdict was of more importance to him than that of all the vestries in the land. He decided to go.

She greeted him with greater enthusiasm than she had ever before manifested toward him.

“It was wonderful, Arnold, wonderful. I never guessed it was in you. I can’t tell you how proud I was of you. It was a splendid sermon it was splendid courage. It was if only I had the words....”

“You don’t need words,” he said softly, taking her hands into his, and looking tenderly into her eyes.

She continued to pour oil on his troubled soul, but she withdrew her hands, and not again did she allow herself to come so close to him. He felt vaguely disappointed, even in the midst of her praise.

“I am so humiliated for what I said to you last week,” she cried.

“It was what made this,” he said simply.

Suddenly her gaze went beyond him, and he followed it to the doorway. His face clouded. A gust of annoyance swept him for Judith, for this trick she had played him. It was unfair of her thus to force him to meet a man she knew he detested. But his irritation changed to surprise, when Good, with his long awkward stride, hurried toward him, and seized his hand.

“Mr. Imrie,” he said genuinely, “I was in your church this morning. I want to tell you that that was one of the biggest things I ever saw. My congratulations probably don’t mean much to you, but they’re yours without a shadow of a reservation. That was the noblest sermon I ever heard.”

The man’s enthusiasm was so deep and so obviously sincere that Imrie’s instinctive antipathy was banished. After all, he told himself on reflection, his dislike for Good was based on his antagonism for the smug hypocrisy, the senseless irreligion that he had himself attacked only that morning. In a way they were brothers in a common cause. It was with a very different feeling than he had expected that he accepted the tall man’s congratulations and with the utmost sincerity that he thanked him.

Supper proved a gay function. Judith was at her happiest, and Good’s anecdotes followed one another in merry succession. Imrie found himself insensibly warming to the man he had disliked so intensely, and rather grateful than otherwise to Judith for having arranged so pleasant a meeting.

But when the meal was finished and they were in the library with their coffee, mirth seemed to leave the gathering, and a certain constraint fell upon them all. Each of the men wanted to talk to Judith of matters which were too intimate to share with the other. Their remarks diminished rapidly in frequency and extent, and presently there was complete silence. It was necessary for Judith to break it. She thought it best to get to the heart of things immediately. She addressed herself first to Good.

“Shall I tell him what we have done?” she asked, as if not quite sure of herself. The tall man nodded, not very enthusiastically, it seemed to Imrie.

“Well....” Again she hesitated. “I suppose it’s best to break the news without any preliminaries?” Good nodded his assent.

“Still, it’s so very surprising however, the fact is ... we’ve bought a newspaper The Dispatch!”

“Yes?” Imrie refused to show any surprise at all. Obviously he thought it was some subtle jest they were playing upon him.

“You don’t understand,” cried Judith, “I’m the owner of a newspaper.”

“Well what for?”

“To tell the truth,” she said solemnly.

Imrie smiled indulgently. “That’s praiseworthy, I’m sure,” he said ironically.

That was too much for Good. Obviously the clergyman did not understand. He must be made to understand. His timidity slipped from him and he plunged into an explanation of the great plans they were making.

Imrie listened attentively, and as he caught the significance of the idea his manner changed from scepticism to something approaching enthusiasm. Then his face slowly hardened and a semblance of a sneer formed on his lips.

“Telling the truth may get you into trouble,” he said half to himself.

“Of course,” cried Good, “it not only may it’s certain to.”

Imrie turned to Judith. “Are you as optimistic as Mr. Good?”

Her lips narrowed ever so slightly and a faint suggestion of a gleam came into her eyes. Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed lightly. “If trouble comes I shall be ready.”

“But you’re not sure that it will come?”

“I’m not experienced in such things. Were you sure of trouble when you delivered your sermon this morning?”

“Quite.”

“Did it come?”

“It did.”

Imrie smiled pleasantly enough but the bitterness of his tone was not lost on Judith.

“Arnold what do you mean what trouble?”

“What would you expect? I have resigned.”

“The devil!” cried Good.

Judith’s amazement was not feigned. It struck Imrie that it would have been more pleasant to him had she shown less astonishment at the course he had taken. “But it isn’t final?” she cried.

“As far as I am concerned, it is. It is not at all unlikely that the vestry will find it final too.” More than ever Imrie resented the presence of Good. He wanted to explain to Judith the part she had played in his resolution. That made him tell the story of his interview with Judge Wolcott very perfunctorily, and dismiss the subject as quickly as he could.

But Good was not easily put off, although Judith seemed to sense the purpose in his reticence. “What will you do if you resign?” he asked bluntly.

“Not ‘if,’” said Imrie coldly, “I have already resigned.”

Good ignored the snub. “What’ll you do next?” he persisted.

“I have no idea,” said Imrie, turning away. A moment later he rose to leave.

Good eyed him quizzically as they shook hands, and smiled, half wistfully, half amusedly. “You don’t understand me, Mr. Imrie,” he said with characteristic candour; “you don’t think I understand. I’m older than you. I have been through things. Some day perhaps oh, well, we’ll wait for the day, won’t we?”

Imrie was puzzled. He was vaguely grateful, too, though he could find no words to express his gratitude. He stared perplexedly at Good, who had picked up a magazine and appeared deeply engrossed. Then he shrugged his shoulders helplessly and turned to go.

“Some time,” he said to Judith, who had followed him to the door, “I should like to see you and tell you all about it.” He looked at her longingly as he spoke. He seemed very tired, she thought.

“I understand,” said Judith. He wondered if she really did.

A cold rain had been falling steadily all evening. The street lamps flickered dismally through the mist and the trees dripped soddenly. It was a fitting end, he thought, to the dreariest day he had ever known. The morning had seen the ruin of his flowering career, cut down by his own ruthless hand, under no compulsion save that of his own senseless conscience. And the evening, as a bitter crown to the day, had seen the salt of jealousy ground into his wounds. The contrast between himself standing on the brink of indecision, wandering aimlessly from disgust to humiliation, without satisfaction in the past or hope for the future; and that other man who had no indecision, whose hopes were half realised made his heart heavy within him.

It was a saddened and chaotic Imrie who plodded on through the lonely streets striving to regain some fragment of the philosophy which had deserted him so utterly.