The young priest rose as his hostess and her new guest came into the Eighteen-Sixty parlor. He was a handsome man and his eyes were kindly, yet he had the face of an ascetic.
"Miss Forbes is right," he said. "New York needs men with high convictions and the courage of them."
"So does the Church," replied Luke heartily—"and she is getting them now."
They sat down.
"The Church," said Nicholson, "has always had them. What she lacked was the co-operation of such men in the practical world. If all of our millionaires were like some few of them, our work would be easy; but now we scarcely know which is more dangerous: the evil tyrant or the evil demagogue."
He talked for some time in this strain, not to weariness, but with the completeness of the zealot. Nicholson regarded wealth as a sacred trust, a gift from God given to the great intellects of the world only that it might be administered for the benefit of the lesser of God's creatures. He mentioned no specific instance, but he saw in many of the country's rich men souls that were proving worthy of their trust and others that were using their money selfishly and even cruelly. For the former he had the highest regard, for the latter the severest condemnation; the spiritual and physical welfare of the poor he considered as the especial care of the more fortunate, and charity was not only the right of penury: it was the salvation of the rich.
Betty listened to him with a rapt face; Luke honored him, but sincerely hoped that he would go. Fearing that this desire was becoming too patent, Luke said:
"The Manhattan and Niagara people don't seem to share your views."
"Ah," said Nicholson, "there you touch a vexed problem, because there you have to do with a corporation, and it is almost a fact that corporations have no souls."
"If that corporation ever had any, it is damned," said Luke; "but what I'm driving at is that the individuals composing a corporation have moral responsibilities."