The Professor threw himself into the situation with a fatherly tenderness which went to Bayard’s heart; but the theologian was disconcerted by this glimpse into real life. He had been so occupied with the misery of the next world that he had never investigated the hell of this one. He was greatly perplexed.
“As man to man, Bayard,” he said, “you must tell me the exact amount of truth in those womanly alarms which agitate my daughter’s heart, and to which I allowed myself to yield without, perhaps, sufficient reflection. I find it difficult to believe that any harm can actually befall you in a New England town. That Windover would really injure you? It seems to me, in cool blood, incredible.”
“Windover would not,” replied Bayard, smiling. “They don’t love me, but they don’t mob a man for that. Windover won’t harm me. Did you ever hear a phrase, common along the coast, here, Professor—‘Rum done it’?”
The Cesarea Professor shook his head. “I am not familiar with the phrase,” he urged; “it lacks in grammar”—
“What it gains in pith,” interrupted Bayard; “but it sums up the situation. A business that thrives on the ruin of men is not likely to be sensitive in the direction of inflicting unnecessary suffering. I have successfully offended the liquor interests of the whole vicinity. The new chapel represents to them the growth of the only power in this town which they have found reason to fear. That’s the amount of it.”
“But the—churches, Bayard—the Christian classes? The ecclesiastical methods of restraining vice?”
“The ecclesiastical methods do not shut up the saloons,” said Bayard gently. “Angel Alley is not afraid of the churches.”
“I am not familiar with the literature of the temperance movement,” observed the Professor helplessly. “It is a foreign subject to me. I am not prepared to argue with you.”
“You will find some of it on my library shelves,” said Bayard; “it might interest you some time to glance at it.”
“When my manuscript on the New Version is completed, I shall take pleasure in doing so,” replied the Professor politely; “but the point now is, just what, and how much do you fear from the state of things to which you refer? Helen is a level-headed girl. I take it for granted that she has not wrought herself into a hysterical fright without basis. I have acted on my knowledge of my daughter’s nature. I understand that, if I am uninstructed in the temperance agitation.”