The Undercurrent

by Robert Grant

VII

Two days later the Rev. George Prentiss dined at the house of another of his parishioners, Mrs. Randolph Wilson. She was a widow of about forty-five, the sister of Carleton Howard, reputedly the wealthiest and most sagacious of Benham's financial magnates, and a generous benefactress of St. Stephen's. Her bounty had enabled the rector from time to time to carry out his cherished plans for the æsthetic adornment of the church property. The reredos, two stained-glass windows, and the baptismal font in the enlarged edifice had been provided by her; and in the matter of charity she never failed to respond by munificent subscriptions to the various causes in aid of which he appealed to his congregation. They were friends and allies; interested mutually in St. Stephen's, and interested also, as they both liked to feel, in promoting American civilization outside of church work. Her house, or palace, as it should more properly be termed, a counterpart to that of her brother's which adjoined it, stood in the van of progress, in Benham's fashionable new quarter beyond the River Drive. No pains or expense had been spared to make these mansions impressive and magnificent. Architects of repute had been employed to superintend their construction, and their decorations and furnishings had been chosen in consultation with persons whose business it was to know the whereabouts of admirable objects of art, and to tempt impecunious noble families abroad to exchange their unique treasures for dazzling round sums of American gold.

Mrs. Wilson could fairly be termed the leader of social activity in Benham, if such a term be compatible with the institutions of a country where every women is supposed to be a law unto herself. Fashions, in the narrow sense of clothes, are in America set by the dressmakers, but what Mrs. Wilson wore was always a matter of moment to women who wished to be in style. She dressed elegantly, and she was able to take liberties with the dressmakers, doing daring things with colors and materials which justified themselves, yet were so individual that they were liable to make guys of those who copied her. Consequently, her wardrobe had a distinction of its own which proclaimed fashion yet defied it. Yet her clothes, striking and superb as they often were, constituted only a small part of her social effectiveness. Her gracious finished manners, and quick, tactful intelligence were the agents of a spirit perpetually eager to be occupied and to lead, and which had found a labor of love in directing what may well be called Benham's æsthetic renaissance.

For Benham's evolution had been no mere growth of bricks and mortar, and no mere triumph in census figures over other centres of population. Even more remarkable and swift than its physical changes had been the transformation in the point of view of its citizens. Twenty years earlier—in 1870, when Mr. Prentiss was a young man just starting in the ministry—he had been one of a small group of earnest souls interested in awakening the public to a consciousness of the paucity of their æsthetic interests, and to the value of color as a stimulating factor in the every-day life of the community, and as such he had often deplored the aridity of Benham's point of view. In those days the city was virtually a hot-bed of republican simplicity and contempt for social refinements so far as all but a very small percentage of the inhabitants was concerned. Those who built houses larger and finer than their neighbors were few in number and were stigmatized, if not as enemies of the institutions of the country, as purse-proud and frivolous. Hotels were conducted on the theory that what was good enough for the landlord was good enough for the guest, and that malcontents could go elsewhere. In matters appertaining to art, hygiene, education or municipal management, one man's opinion was regarded as equal to any other's, provided he could get the job. Special knowledge was sneered at, and the best patriots in the public estimation were those who did not distrust the ability of the average citizen to produce masterpieces in the line of his or her employment by dint of raw genius untrammelled or unpolluted by the experience of older civilizations. Though solid business men wore solemn-looking black frock-coats and black wisp ties in business hours, to dress again in the evening was looked at askance as undemocratic. It would have been considered an invasion of the rights of the free-born citizen to forbid expectoration in the street cars. Suggestions that the vicious and unregenerate adult pauper poor should not be herded with the young, that busy physicians should cleanse a lancet before probing a wound, and that sewage should not be emptied into a river used as a source of water supply, were still sniffed at by those in charge of public affairs as aristocratic innovations unworthy the attention of a sovereign people. Architectural beauty both within and without the house was disregarded in favor of monotonous sober hues and solid effects, which were deemed to be suggestive of the seriousness of the national character.

While deploring some of these civic manifestations, Mr. Prentiss had appreciated that the basis of this æsthetic sterility was ethical. When less discerning persons had attributed it solely to ignorance and self-righteous superficiality he had maintained that a puritanical, yet moral and sincere, hostility to extravagance and display was responsible for the preference for ugly architecture and homely upholstery and decoration, and that conscience was the most formidable obstacle to progress. As a priest of a church which fostered beauty and favored rational enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, he had never sympathized with this public attitude, but he had understood and, as an American, respected it.

Now, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, all was changed, and Benham was in the throes of a revival; a revival which during the last ten years had revolutionized Benham's architecture and Benham's point of view. The public had become possessed by the conviction that they had outgrown their associations and that the standards hitherto revered were out of date and unworthy of a nation and a city pledged to enlighten the world, upon whom prosperity had been bestowed in large measure. The group of earnest souls who had dared to criticise seemed suddenly to have become a phalanx—numerically unimportant, still, when compared with the whole population, that seething army of industrial wage-earners—but assertive and energetic out of proportion to their numbers. The city had become a hive of reforming activities. Specialists in the arts and humanities were no longer classed as traitors, but were welcomed by a growing clientage as safeguards against bumptious individualism. Though a cheerful optimism in regard to the city's architectural merits still prevailed at large, a silent censorship was at work; substituting, in the business quarter, new mammoth structures adapted to modern industrial needs, erecting in the fashionable quarter, by the aid of American architects trained in Paris, well-built and individual-looking residences. Instead of three or four cheerless, barrack-like caravansaries with sodden cookery, there was a score of modern hotels, the proprietors of which vied with one another in their endeavors to lure patronage by costly and sumptuous innovations. There were comfortable and inviting restaurants. The slap-dash luncheon counter, with its display of pallid pie and one cadaverous chicken, was waning in the popular esteem, in favor of neat spas, at which the rush of patronage was alleviated by clean service and wholesome fare. There were eight theatres, each more spacious and splendid than its predecessor. A frowsy black coat, worn in the forenoon, had ceased to be a badge of patriotism or moral worth, and the community had become alive to the values of spruceness, color, and comfort in matters of dress. Not only this, but on the streets of Benham there were many stylish equipages with liveried grooms, and in the superb homes which the wealthy citizens had established, there were grand entertainments, where rivalry was rampant and money flowed like champagne. And last, but not least, there was Mrs. Randolph Wilson, the quintessence in her own person of all that was best in this revival in favor of the beautiful things of life, the living embodiment of this newly directed and freshly inspired energy. For well-to-do Benham and Mr. Prentiss liked to believe that the impulse behind these materialistic manifestations was conscience and aspiration, a reaching out for a greater human happiness and a wider human usefulness than had been possible under the old dispensation. This access of lavish philanthropy and study of charitable methods, this zeal of committees promoting new and more thorough methods in hygiene and education, and all the phases of this new awakening in quest of Christian beauty signified to him Benham's—and hence American—originality and fervor refined and spiritualized; Benham's enterprise and independence informed, chastened, and fortified.

And yet there was another side to this whole matter which had haunted Mr. Prentiss much of late, and which was in his thoughts to-night as he sat smoking his cigar after dinner. He had dined sumptuously. Cool oysters, soup of mushrooms, fish smothered in a luscious sauce, cutlets of venison with French beans, little pyramids of paté de foie gras encased in jelly, butter-ball ducks with a salad richly dressed, and a confection of fruit, cream, and pastry, which was evidently a gastronomic specialty of Mrs. Wilson's French cook. He had tasted everything; he had drunk two glasses of champagne, and been pleasantly aware that the cup of black coffee, served after dinner, was an entrancing concoction which his own kitchen did not afford; and he felt that his repast had done him good. It was for him an occasion. Obviously it was for Mrs. Wilson an every-day affair. Moreover, this rich, delicious dinner, served by noiseless servants on choice china, was in harmony with the rest of the magnificent establishment, in harmony with the artistic scheme of color, the soft lustrous draperies, the striking pictures and other masterpieces of art purchased for large sums abroad, and Mrs. Wilson's beautiful toilette and exquisite personality. Here was luxury triumphant and compelling, yet unappeased and seeking fresh opportunities for æsthetic delight; as witness a Millet, an inlaid table, and a Japanese idol in the room in which he sat, all new since he had dined there last.

What a vivid contrast all this to the cheerless often squalid homes which he was accustomed to visit as a rector of Christ's church! The thought which haunted him was that one result of the city's marvellous growth and development had been the accentuation of the distinctions between rich and poor, between class and class in a community where, until lately, there had been theoretically no classes. To be sure he had Mr. Carleton Howard's assertion that there was no country in the world where the poor man was so well off. This was very likely true, but it did not affect the proposition that the rich were daily growing richer and more self-indulgent. What was to be the limit—the outcome of this renaissance of beauty and comfort, which he had welcomed? Had not the æsthetic reaction almost reached the point where, both as a priest of God and as a good American, it behooved him to cry halt against luxury and extravagance? He frowned at this last reflection for the reason that he was painfully aware that he had fulminated against this sort of thing from the pulpit for years, formerly as part of the clerical formula championing the cause of the spirit against the flesh, and latterly because the Aladdin-like growth of great fortunes all over the land, and conspicuously in his own community, had often suggested the comparison between the passage of a camel through the eye of a needle and the rich man's entrance into the kingdom of heaven as an appropriate text. He had spoken with fervor and sincerity concerning the responsibilities of those having great possessions, and sometimes with living pictures in his mind. Neither Mrs. Wilson nor her brother had ever been among those for whom these admonitions were intended. They had opened their purse-strings liberally to every meritorious cause. The goodly size of their cheques was to him a constant source both of satisfaction and astonishment—astonishment at the new possibilities open to those interested in God's kingdom.

Yet, though he put from him as ungenerous and unnecessary any positive criticism of his hostess, in the teeth of her many benefactions and her personal activity in social undertakings, he could not help realizing that, in spite of his utterances, the evil which he deprecated was proceeding at a pace which suggested the course of wild-fire. And the worst of it was that he—the church—was so helpless. Great fortunes had been accumulated with a zeal which suggested the inevitable march of destiny—a law which seemed almost to mock the spirit of Christ—and, even while he was musing, the city had become a theatre of industrial contrasts, with the pomp and pride of life in the centre of the stage and poverty and distress in the ample background. There recurred to him the traditional image of the curate of his faith—the Church of England—cringing before or patronized by the titled worshippers of Mammon. This, at least, he could resent as impossible in his case—he had never hesitated to speak his mind to any of his parishioners, however important—still, the reminder was disconcerting and a challenge to his conscience. Nor was the reflection that this wave of luxury, this more and more exacting reverence for material comforts, was a part of the movement of the century, and was common to all civilized countries, a solace. He was an American, but first of all, he was a servant of the church, and the church was the beacon of civilization. Was she doing her work, if these terrible inequalities were to continue? What was to be the outcome of this zest for luxurious personal comfort?

To what extent the church ought to take part in the economic regeneration of the world was one of the questions which Mr. Prentiss had always found perplexing. He was well aware that his parishioners as a body were not fond of hearing him preach on what they called secular subjects. So long as he confined himself to enumerating spiritual truths, they were not averse to his illustrating his stigmas upon sin by generalizations from current worldly abuses; but he knew that many shook their heads and declared that the cobbler should stick to his last when he ventured to discourse on political topics or the relations of labor and capital. Mr. Prentiss was not aware, however, that some of this prejudice proceeded from the circumstance that he was apt to lose his head on such occasions; but, on the other hand, much of it was genuine disinclination for advice from the pulpit on subjects which, to quote the women parishioners, were not spiritual, and, to quote the men, were none of his business. His congregation was almost entirely composed of pew owners, people with vested rights, among which appeared to be the right not to be harrowed by socialistic doctrines. They were ready to help the poor in any way which he would suggest, and they had supplied him with a mission church where he could reach the ignorant and needy more effectively, but they argued that he had better leave to the politicians all suggestions tending to disturb the existing industrial order.

Mr. Prentiss sometimes sighed over these limitations, but he had become used to them, and in a measure, with advancing years, he had, in his endeavor to be a man of the world in order to remain a more useful Christian, accepted the doctrine that he had no plan to substitute for the present economic system, and that he must make the best of the existing situation. So, in practical, daily life, he exhorted the rich to give their money and themselves to the advancement of their fellow men, and the poor to shun vice and bear their privations with patience, while he held forth the promise of the church of an existence hereafter for the pure in heart where all the seeming inconsistencies of this mortal life would be explained and justified. Not being endowed with much sense of humor, Mr. Prentiss, as he waxed in years, and St. Stephen's became the fashionable church of the city, had found less and less difficulty in accommodating himself to this point of view, and in devoting all his ardor to reclaiming souls for Christ. After all, was not his mission to help men and women as he found them? First of all to minister to their souls, and in the name of Christianity to lift them from the slough of human suffering and misfortune that he might expound to them the loving mercies of the Lord? The things of the earth were not the things of the spirit, and he was more tenacious than in his youth of the prerogatives of the church as an institution controlling human consciences by standards of its own, founded on the teachings of the Prince of Peace. Nevertheless, being reasonably clear-headed and fearless, he was not without the suspicion at times that this reasoning was mystical, and in the face of facts he had every now and then his unpleasant quarters of an hour.

This was one of them to-night. His hostess, when the dinner was over, had left him to a cigar and his own devices in the library. He was to join her presently and be shown her daughter's wedding presents. He had been invited to dine in order that he might see them, but Mrs. Wilson and he both knew that this was an excuse for a quiet evening together in which they might compare notes concerning their mutual interests. Reaching out to knock off the ash of his cigar into a dainty porcelain wheelbarrow, he noticed a new photograph on the mantel-piece and rose to examine it. He recognized it as one of Clarence Waldo, the New Yorker to whom Miss Lucille Wilson was betrothed. The sight of this young man's countenance did not serve to restore Mr. Prentiss's serenity. On the contrary, he stood gazing at the photograph with an expression which suggested that his soul was still perturbed. The face was that of a man of twenty-seven or eight with delicate features—thin lips, a long nose and an indefinable haughtiness of expression which was made up of weariness and disdain. He had large eyes which lacked lustre, and his sparse hair gave the effect of having been carefully brushed. The clergyman had met him only a few times, and Mr. Prentiss had never forgotten the first occasion, which was at Lucille's coming-out ball three years before. He had happened to find himself in Mr. Waldo's path when the young man was in the act of carrying everything before him with a plate of salad for his partner, and he had never forgotten the cold impertinence of the New Yorker's stare. Paul Howard, Lucille's cousin, who witnessed the encounter, said afterward that Clarence had given Mr. Prentiss the dead eye, which was a telling description of the stoniness of the fashionable New Yorker's gaze. Mr. Prentiss had never heard this diagnosis, but he had remembered the episode. He regarded it, however, merely as additional evidence of the lack of reverence on the part of the young men of the day—and the young women, too, for the matter of that—not merely for sacred things, but for everything and everybody which were in their way or did not happen to appeal to their fancy. But though he considered this absence of social politeness as one of the cardinal failings of the age, his present thoughts regarding Lucille's future husband were not concerned with it.

Since the engagement had been announced four months ago he had been making inquiries, and the information which he had received was in his mind and troubled his soul as a corollary of the other problems which had just been haunting him. It was not of a character to justify him in forbidding the bans—not even in remonstrating with Mrs. Wilson, unless she were to ask his advice or provide him with an opportunity. But he deplored sincerely that this young man was to marry his friend's daughter. Was this to be the outcome, the crowning of the wealth of love and solicitude which had been lavished on this only child—a child brought up in his church? Was it for this that Lucille had been made the central figure of costly entertainments for the last three years, in the hope that she might make a brilliant match? Decidedly, it was a puzzling world, and circumstances seemed to be conspiring to cloud his horizon and disturb his digestion at a time when he ought to be enjoying himself and taking his ease.

"What does he offer her?" he said to himself. "Twelve months of sporting life—American sporting life. A superb stable, a four-in-hand coach and steam yacht, polo, golf, the horse show, cards, six months every third year in Europe, their summers at Newport, their winters at Palm Beach. The fortune which she will bring him will enable them to live in the lap of luxury all the year round, and he will teach her to regard those who are not rich and who do not imitate their manner of life as beneath their notice. I know the kind—I know the kind."

Soft footsteps interrupted his mental soliloquy. "No, thank you," he exclaimed in a tone which was almost militant to the waiters who approached him with a tray. Mr. Prentiss supposed that another form of stimulant was being offered him, for Madeira, liqueurs and coffee had been successively brought in and solemnly presented to him by the two men servants, one of whom seemed to him as superfluous as a plumber's helper. Then as his gaze, which had been inward, appreciated that the silver gilt tumbler contained apollinaris water, he called them back and emptied the glass. He had finished his cigar and it was time to rejoin his hostess.