“To Mrs. Bradley. I see here that her husband died yesterday afternoon. I believe his death lifts the bar of her prohibition, and opens the way to her conscience.”
“Is she the woman who refused to let you call on her after she had had the lawsuit?”
“Yes, but I believe she will have a different mind toward me now. This last affliction, if it may be called such, should make her not only willing to see me, but should also make her susceptible to religious influence.”
Mrs. Farrar said nothing, but the look on her face indicated that it was still her belief, as it had been from the start, that a woman who would refuse to permit Mr. Farrar to call on her for purposes of pious consolation was quite outside the bounds of susceptibility to any religious influence, exerted under any conditions. She had great admiration, not only for her husband’s intellectual force, but for his personal charm and persuasive power as well. She loved him, she believed in him, she trusted him implicitly; but she did not fully understand him. He trod in paths where she had neither the learning nor the ability to follow him; neither the mental nor the physical strength to share in the largeness of his thought, or in the intense application of that thought to the problems of his pastoral work. The most that she could do, and that she did faithfully, was to be a good wife and mother, to devote her spare time to the interests of the Church, and to find mild relaxation in the society of those people who, by reason of her birth and breeding, as well as of her position, welcomed her to their exclusive circles.
“I wish,” said the clergyman, expressing the continuation of his thought, “that I might make an opportunity for you to call on Mrs. Bradley. I believe that in her present misfortune she might be willing to accept the ministrations of a good woman of the Church.”
“Yes, dear. I will call on her if you wish it. Only I don’t see how I could possibly have any influence on a woman who doesn’t believe in the power of prayer. It seems so shocking to me.”
“I know. It is shocking. But I hope we shall find her now in a better frame of mind. I am told that she is a very superior woman, and I am anxious to get her into the Church. If you could only manage to approach her on some sort of social level. I believe that the trouble with all of us Church people, the reason why we don’t reach people of the humbler kind, is that we don’t make our social plane broad enough to take them in. We assume too much superiority. They don’t like it, and I can’t blame them. When we bring ourselves to meeting them on terms of social equality we shall get them to share with us our religious blessings, and I’m afraid not before.”
“Yes, dear.”
She felt that the conversation was already drifting beyond her easy comprehension, and that the only thing for her to do was to acquiesce. Yet, notwithstanding her respect for her husband’s social theories, the depths of which she was never quite able to comprehend, she could not help a feeling of revolt at the idea of associating, on terms of equality, with people of the cruder if not the baser sort, with such a person, for instance, as Mary Bradley, who ignored religion, and who had flouted the rector of Christ Church.