The Inside of the Cup — Complete. Winston Churchill

rector in his new mood, and it was made manifest to him as never before why his appeals from the pulpit had lacked efficacy. Mr. Plimpton didn't want the world changed! And in this desire he represented the men in that room, and the majority of the congregation of St. John's. The rector had felt something of this before, and it seemed to him astonishing that the revelation had not come to him sooner. Did any one of them, in his heart, care anything for the ideals and aspirations of the Church?

      As he gazed at them through the gathering smoke they had become strangers, receded all at once to a great distance. … Across the room he caught the name, Bedloe Hubbell, pronounced with peculiar bitterness by Mr. Ferguson. At his side Everett Constable was alert, listening.

      “Ten years ago,” said a stout Mr. Varnum, the President of the Third National Bank, “if you'd told me that that man was to become a demagogue and a reformer, I wouldn't have believed you. Why, his company used to take rebates from the L. & G., and the Southern—I know it.” He emphasized the statement with a blow on the table that made the liqueur glasses dance. “And now, with his Municipal League, he's going to clean up the city, is he? Put in a reform mayor. Show up what he calls the Consolidated Tractions Company scandal. Pooh!”

      “You got out all right, Varnum. You won't be locked up,” said Mr. Plimpton, banteringly.

      “So did you,” retorted Varnum.

      “So did Ferguson, so did Constable.”

      “So did Eldon Parr,” remarked another man, amidst a climax of laughter.

      “Langmaid handled that pretty well.”

      Hodder felt Everett Constable fidget.

      “Bedloe's all right, but he's a dreamer,” Mr. Plimpton volunteered.

      “Then I wish he'd stop dreaming,” said Mr. Ferguson, and there was more laughter, although he had spoken savagely.

      “That's what he is, a dreamer,” Varnum ejaculated. “Say, he told George Carter the other day that prostitution wasn't necessary, that in fifty years we'd have largely done away with it. Think of that, and it's as old as Sodom and Gomorrah!”

      “If Hubbell had his way, he'd make this town look like a Connecticut hill village—he'd drive all the prosperity out of it. All the railroads would have to abandon their terminals—there'd be no more traffic, and you'd have to walk across the bridge to get a drink.”

      “Well,” said Mr. Plimpton, “Tom Beatty's good enough for me, for a while.”

      Beatty, Hodder knew, was the “boss,” of the city, with headquarters in a downtown saloon.

      “Beatty's been maligned,” Mr. Varnum declared. “I don't say he's a saint, but he's run the town pretty well, on the whole, and kept the vice where it belongs, out of sight. He's made his pile, but he's entitled to something we all are. You always know where you stand with Beatty. But say, if Hubbell and his crowd—”

      “Don't worry about Bedloe—he'll get called in, he'll come home to roost like the rest of them,” said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. “The people can't govern themselves—only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find it out.” …

      The French window beside him was open, and Hodder slipped out, unnoticed, into the warm night and stood staring at the darkness. His one desire had been to get away, out of hearing, and he pressed forward over the tiled pavement until he stumbled against a stone balustrade that guarded a drop of five feet or so to the lawn below. At the same time he heard his name called.

      “Is that you, Mr. Hodder?”

      He started. The voice had a wistful tremulousness, and might almost have been the echo of the leaves stirring in the night air. Then he perceived, in a shaft of light from one of the drawing-room windows near by, a girl standing beside the balustrade; and as she came towards him, with tentative steps, the light played conjurer, catching the silvery gauze of her dress and striking an aura through the film of her hair.

      “It's Nan Ferguson,” she said.

      “Of course,” he exclaimed, collecting himself. “How stupid of me not to have recognized you!”

      “I'm so glad you came out,” she went on impulsively, yet shyly, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was that that thing happened at the table.”

      “I like that young man,” he said.

      “Do you?” she exclaimed, with unexpected gratitude. “So do I. He really isn't—so bad as he must seem.”

      “I'm sure of it,” said the rector, laughing.

      “I was afraid you'd think him wicked,” said Nan. “He works awfully hard, and he's sending a brother through college. He isn't a bit like—some others I know. He wants to make something of himself. And I feel responsible, because I had mother ask him to-night.”

      He read her secret. No doubt she meant him to do so.

      “You know we're going away next week, for the summer—that is, mother and I,” she continued. “Father comes later. And I do hope you'll make us a visit, Mr. Hodder—we were disappointed you couldn't come last year.” Nan hesitated, and thrusting her hand into her gown drew forth an envelope and held it out to him. “I intended to give you this to-night, to use—for anything you thought best.”

      He took it gravely. She looked up at him.

      “It seems so little—such a selfish way of discharging one's obligations, just to write out a cheque, when there is so much trouble in the world that demands human kindness as well as material help. I drove up Dalton Street yesterday, from downtown. You know how hot it was! And I couldn't help thinking how terrible it is that we who have everything are so heedless of all that misery. The thought of it took away all my pleasure.

      “I'd do something more, something personal, if I could. Perhaps I shall be able to, next winter. Why is it so difficult for all of us to know what to do?”

      “We have taken a step forward, at any rate, when we know that it is difficult,” he said.

      She gazed up at him fixedly, her attention caught by an indefinable something in his voice, in his smile, that thrilled and vaguely disturbed her. She remembered it long afterwards. It suddenly made her shy again; as if, in faring forth into the darkness, she had come to the threshold of a mystery, of a revelation withheld; and it brought back the sense of adventure, of the palpitating fear and daring with which she had come to meet him.

      “It is something to know,” she repeated, half comprehending. The scraping of chairs within alarmed her, and she stood ready to fly.

      “But I haven't thanked you for this,” he said, holding up the envelope. “It may be that I shall find some one in Dalton Street—”

      “Oh, I hope so,” she faltered, breathlessly, hesitating a moment. And then she was gone, into the house.