There was on Mr. Parr's lips a smile not wholly pleasant to see. Indeed, in the last few minutes there had been revealed to Hodder a side of the banker's character which had escaped him in the two years of their acquaintance.
“I suppose,” said Mr. Parr, slowly, drumming on the table, “you would say that of the new settlement house of St. John's, whereby we hope to raise a whole neighbourhood.”
“Yes, I should,” replied Alison, with spirit. “The social system by which you thrive, and which politically and financially you strive to maintain, is diametrically opposed to your creed, which is supposed to be the brotherhood of man. But if that were really your creed, you would work for it politically and financially. You would see that your Church is trying to do infinitesimally what the government, but for your opposition, might do universally. Your true creed is the survival of the fittest. You grind these people down into what is really an economic slavery and dependence, and then you insult and degrade them by inviting them to exercise and read books and sing hymns in your settlement house, and give their children crackers and milk and kindergartens and sunlight! I don't blame them for not becoming Christians on that basis. Why, the very day I left New York a man over eighty, who had been swindled out of all he had, rather than go to one of those Christian institutions deliberately forged a check and demanded to be sent to the penitentiary. He said he could live and die there with some self-respect.”
“I might have anticipated that you would ultimately become a Socialist, Alison,” Mr. Parr remarked—but his voice trembled.
“I don't know whether I'm a Socialist or an Anarchist,” she answered. Hodder thought he detected a note of hopelessness in her voice, and the spirit in it ebbed a little. Not only did she seem indifferent to her father's feeling—which incidentally added fuel to it—but her splendid disregard of him, as a clergyman, had made an oddly powerful appeal. And her argument! His feelings, as he listened to this tremendous arraignment of Eldon Parr by his daughter, are not easily to be described. To say that she had compelled him, the rector of St. John's, at last to look in the face many conditions which he had refused to recognize would be too definite a statement. Nevertheless, some such thing had occurred. Refutations sprang to his lips, and died there, though he had no notion of uttering them. He saw that to admit her contentions would be to behold crumble into ruins the structure that he had spent a life in rearing; and yet something within him responded to her words—they had the passionate, convincing ring of truth.
By no means the least of their disturbing effects was due to the fact that they came as a climax to, as a fulfilment of the revelation he had had at the Fergusons', when something of the true nature of Mr. Plimpton and others of his congregation had suddenly been laid bare. And now Hodder looked at Eldon Parr to behold another man from the one he had known, and in that moment realized that their relationship could never again be the same... Were his sympathies with the daughter?
“I don't know what I believe,” said Alison, after a pause. “I've ceased trying to find out. What's the use!” She appeared now to be addressing no one in particular.
A servant entered with a card, and the banker's hand shook perceptibly as he put down his claret and adjusted his glasses.
“Show him into my office upstairs, and tell him I'll see him at once,” he said, and glanced at the rector. But it was Alison whom he addressed. “I must leave Mr. Hodder to answer your arguments,” he added, with an attempt at lightness; and then to the rector: “Perhaps you can convince her that the Church is more sinned against than sinning, and that Christians are not such terrible monsters after all. You'll excuse me?”
“Certainly.” Hodder had risen.