by Howard Pyle
Dr. Caiaphas was very paternal towards his son-in-law, and the young man was very filial towards his wife’s father. Nevertheless, when Gilderman came occasionally with his wife to the rectory–to dine, perhaps, with the family–it was as though he descended, bringing her with him, from an exalted altitude to a plane of a lower atmosphere.
He was very dutiful, very kind, very docile, but there was, nevertheless, a certain air of remoteness about him, and neither he nor they forgot that he was Henry Herbert Gilderman, the grandson of James Quincy Gilderman.
Upon this occasion Gilderman sat with the family in the library for a while after dinner.
Already the house was beginning to assume that cluttered appearance that foreshadows the actual time for moving.
“It is dreadful,” said Mrs. Gilderman, “to think of leaving the dear old home. I cannot remember any but this. Horace”–Horace was Mrs. Gilderman’s brother and the bishop’s eldest son–”Horace himself was only eight years old when papa and mamma moved here.”
“By-the-way,” said Gilderman, “when do you expect Horace?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Caiaphas. “We hoped that he would be here some time during the latter part of the month, but I doubt now if he will be on until May. He says these fishery negotiations are keeping them all very busy just now.”
Gilderman laughed. “I dare say,” he said, “that the government might dispense with Horace for a few weeks if he would make a special point of it.”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Caiaphas; “he writes that he’s very busy.”
The two younger daughters, Ella and Frances–slim, angular girls–the one of twelve, the other of fourteen, were sitting under the light of the table-lamp reading. Ella, the elder of the two, kept her finger-tips corked tightly in her ears to shut out the conversation while she read. The others sat by the fire, Mrs. Caiaphas shading her face from the blaze with a folded newspaper. The bishop appeared to be very preoccupied. Every now and then Mrs. Caiaphas glanced towards him from behind the newspaper. “Don’t worry so much about those Kettles, Theodore,” said she.
He looked up, almost with a start. Then he laughed. “Why, I don’t think that I was worrying about the Kettles,” he said. “I was thinking about raising money to finish that central light of the great chancel window at the cathedral. Mrs. Hapgood had promised fifty thousand dollars towards it before she died, but she left no provision for it in her will, and her heirs do not seem willing to carry out her intentions.”
“How much will it cost to finish it?” said Gilderman.
“Well,” said the bishop, “according to the plan of White & Wall it will cost between sixty and eighty thousand dollars.”
“Whew!” whistled Gilderman. Then presently he asked: “Couldn’t it be done for less than that?”
“It might,” said the bishop; “but White & Wall’s design is very beautiful.”
“It ought to be,” said Gilderman. “Look here, sir; why don’t you get a lot of your friends together–Dorman-Webster and the rest of those old fellows–and put it to them? I dare say you could raise it in that way.”
“Well, you see,” said the bishop, “they’ve all contributed so liberally lately that I don’t like to press them too far.” Then he turned to Gilderman. “You, for instance–how much would you be willing to contribute?” he said.
Gilderman laughed. He, too, had given a good deal of money to the church of late, and he did not want to give any more just now. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind giving you two or three thousand.”
The bishop smiled. “That wouldn’t go far,” he said, “and I rather fancy that others may feel as you do.” He looked up at the clock. “Will the study be ready for the committee, my dear?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Caiaphas. “I told John to have it cleared as soon as we were through dinner.”
The committee began arriving a few minutes after the hour. The first arrival was Dr. Dayton. He came directly into the library, almost with the air of ownership. Indeed, the house was really his now, and the bishop was only there on sufferance until the late bishop’s family should vacate at the temple quadrangle house. After the first few words of greeting, he and the bishop presently began talking about the matter in hand. Gilderman sat listening to them.
“But these poor people believe these things,” said Gilderman, cutting in at one point of the conversation.
“If they believe they must be taught to disbelieve,” said Dr. Dayton. “All this insane and irrational enthusiasm of religion,” he continued, “is very revolting to me.” He stood before the fire as he spoke, his legs a little apart and his hands clasped behind his back. “Surely,” he continued, “as we are images of God we must know that God is the perfection of rationality. What pleasure, then, can such senseless irrationality be to Him? That which delights God is the offering of common-sense.”
So spoke Dr. Dayton very positively, as though he knew exactly what God liked and what He did not like.
Presently others of the committee began to come, and then the bishop and Dr. Dayton went into the dining-room.
Gilderman sat for a while listening to the intermittent talk between mother and daughter. The time was drawing very near when Mrs. Gilderman should be confined, and Gilderman was at times almost startled at the directness of the talk between the two. “I wonder if they would object,” he said, after a while, “if I went into the dining-room? I would like very much to hear this examination of Tom Kettle.”
“Why, no, Henry,” said Mrs. Caiaphas. “I am sure they wouldn’t object at all.”
Gilderman hesitated for a moment or two; then he got up and sauntered out of the room.
When he came into the dining-room, he found the company all seated around the table, and Tom Kettle standing before them. He was a rather short, thick-set man, with a heavy, sullen, if not lowering countenance. His eyes were small and set far apart, his cheek-bones wide, and his face short, giving him somewhat the look of a male cat. He winked and blinked in the light, as though his eyes were still weak and his sight tender.
Joseph and Martha Kettle sat in the farther part of the room, close against the wall. Mrs. Caiaphas had given Martha Kettle a “talking-to,” and they were both subdued, almost frightened. Bishop Caiaphas was conducting the examination. He had evidently just asked Tom Kettle how it was he had received his sight. “He put clay on my eyes,” said Tom, briefly, almost sullenly. “Then I went and washed as He told me, and now I can see.”
“How long had you been blind before this happened to you?” asked Dr. Dayton.
“Why,” said Kettle, “that you know as well as I do. I always was blind–I never did see.”
“And do you mean to say,” said Dr. Dayton, “that Christ cured you by simply rubbing dirt on your eyes?”
“Yes, sir,” said the man.
“And you think it was a miracle?”
“You see it’s a miracle,” said the man. “I couldn’t see before, and now I do see.”
“That is not possible,” said Dr. Dayton. “A man who consorts, as this Man does, with sinners and harlots and outcasts of all kinds could not do such a thing. Such as He could have no power from God, and so He could not cure you as you say He did.”
Perhaps all of the committee thought that Dr. Dayton was taking too much on himself in the conduct of the examination. He was a newcomer among them, and it was not becoming that he should arrogate to himself the conduct of the meeting, even though the case did come within the jurisdiction of his own parish.
Mr. Goodman, Mr. Bonteen’s assistant at the temple, was one of the committee. He was a man of very broad and liberal opinions–too broad and liberal most people thought. “Stop a bit, doctor,” he said, “let us be fair. The fact that Christ’s associates are of such a sort does not proclaim Him Himself to be abandoned. If He had really been sent from God to regenerate mankind He would naturally begin with those people who underlie society, would He not?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know about that,” said Dr. Dayton, crossly. “My own observation teaches me that a man cannot be good with evil associates. You know yourself what the Divine Word says–’With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure, with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward.’”
“That is very true,” said Mr. Goodman, “but, after all, this question of good and evil is entirely relative. What these people see as being evil we do not see as being evil; what they see as being good we do not. Do you not think it is a matter for serious question?”
“It is a matter of common-sense,” said Dr. Dayton, almost brusquely.
Mr. Goodman smiled and shrugged his shoulders, but his cheeks grew a little flushed. The other members of the committee felt very uncomfortable.
“What do you say of this Man that cured you?” said Bishop Caiaphas.
“I say he’s a prophet,” said the man.
Dr. Dayton laughed. “I think it’s much more likely that you’re a rogue, my friend. The age of miracles is past and done. In this day of light we do not see miracles, nor does God operate in any other way than according to His divine law of order and of common-sense. When a man who is blind receives his sight, he does it through an orderly change of his body, that is just as perfect and just as slow and according to divine order as the creation of light itself is according to divine order. Health and disease must always be according to order, and cannot be in any other way.”
The man looked steadily at Dr. Dayton as he was speaking. “I don’t know just what you mean,” he said, “but if you mean that I wasn’t blind before, I only know that I was blind. Here are my father and mother–you can ask them.”
The man and his wife were sitting at the far end of the room, as close to the wall as possible, and side by side. Seeing the eyes of the committee fixed upon them, the father slowly arose, holding his cane somewhat tremulously in his hand. He had a weak face and a retreating chin and a twitching movement about the jaw.
“Is this man your son?” said Dr. Hopkinson, of St. David’s Church.
“Yes, sir, he be,” said the man. The woman also had risen and stood close to her husband, but a little behind him.
“Are you sure he has been blind for all these years?”
“Yes, sir,” said the father, “I am sure of that. You see, he couldn’t pretend to be blind all these years and me and his mother not know it.”
“Do you know how it is that he is now able to see?”
The man wiped a tremulous hand across his mouth; the fingers were knotted and twisted with rheumatism. He looked hesitatingly around upon the circle of eyes fixed upon him. “I don’t know, gentlemen,” he said, “about it at all. I know the man’s our son, gentlemen, and I know he was born blind. But how he comes to see now, and who it was that opened his eyes, I don’t know nothing about. He is of age, gentlemen all; ask him. He will speak for hisself.”
It was very plain that the man was afraid of the committee.
Dr. Dayton turned to Tom Kettle. “My friend,” he said, “give to God the glory and the praise for this wonderful thing that has happened to you. As for this Man–we all know He is a sinner.”
Tom Kettle listened sullenly. “I don’t know about that,” he said, “whether He is a sinner or not. One thing I do know: I was blind before, and now I see.”
“Come,” said another minister–a Mr. Parker–”come, my friend, tell us truly what the Man did to you.”
The man turned his face towards the last speaker, winking quiveringly as the bright light fell upon his eyes. “I’ve told you,” he said, with a sudden burst of irritation–”I’ve told you before what the Man did to me. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to go and be His disciples?”
“You forget yourself, my fine fellow,” said Dr. Dayton, “and you forget where you are. We are the disciples of God. As for this Fellow–who is He?”
The man looked impudently into Dr. Dayton’s face. “Why,” said he, “here is a strange thing. You do not know where this Man comes from, and yet He opened my eyes, and just because He did that you say He’s a sinner. Did you ever hear of any other man opening the eyes of a man born blind? How could this Man do it if He wasn’t from God?”
“You were born in sin and you live in sin,” said Dr. Dayton; “do you, then, mean to teach us–ministers of God?”
“Come, come, Tom, that’ll do,” said the bishop; “don’t say anything more. It doesn’t do any good.”
Gilderman stood looking on at all this scene. It seemed to him that Dr. Dayton was very disagreeable, and he disliked him exceedingly. Just then a servant came in and whispered to Gilderman, from Mrs. Gilderman, that the carriage was waiting. “All right,” said Gilderman, “tell her I’ll be there immediately.”
He was curious to see the result of the meeting. He lingered for a few moments, but the members of the committee were talking together. Tom Kettle still stood sullenly at the head of the table. Gilderman was very curious to hear from the man’s own lips just what had happened to him, but there were no more questions asked, and he did not have an opportunity to speak to him.
When Gilderman came out to the carriage with his wife the Kettles had just quitted the rectory. They were walking up the drive to the street and they did not at first know that Mr. and Mrs. Gilderman were so near. Tom Kettle was talking in a loud, violent voice, and his parents were trying in vain to silence him. “I don’t care a damn,” he was saying; “I don’t care if they do turn me out of the Church–what do I care?”
“Hush, hush, Tom!” said the mother; “don’t talk so loud; they’ll hear you.”
“I don’t care if they do hear me,” said he. “They ain’t done nothing for me. He made me see. I know that, and they can’t make me say nothing else. They may go to hell! I know what He did to me.”
“Hush, hush, Tom!” they could hear Mrs. Kettle saying. “There’s Mr. Gilderman.”
“Isn’t it dreadful!” said Mrs. Gilderman. She and Gilderman were standing under the porte-cochère.
“Yes–yes; I suppose it is,” said Gilderman. Then he suddenly called out: “Here, Tom; come here a minute. I want to speak to you.”
Although Tom Kettle had said that he did not care for any of them, he had ceased his loud, violent talking. He did not come at Gilderman’s bidding. “If you want to speak to me,” he said, “you can come to me–I’m not coming to you.”
“Very well,” said Gilderman, “I will come.” He went down the steps and along the driveway to where the three figures stood in the gloom beyond the verge of light of the electric lantern. They made no attempt to escape, but it seemed to him that they shrank at the approach of his powerful presence.
“It ain’t our fault, Mr. Gilderman,” said Martha Kettle, almost crying. “He will talk, and I can’t stop him.”
“No, you can’t,” said Tom Kettle, sullenly but defiantly.
“That’s all right, Martha,” said Gilderman. “Look here, Tom; I want you to tell me all the truth about this. What did Christ do to you?”
The man looked stubborn and lowering. “You heard me tell ’em in yonder, didn’t you?” said he. “Why do you ask me again?”
“Because I want to know. How did He do it? What did He do to you?”
Tom Kettle looked at him suspiciously for a little space. Then a sudden impulse seemed to seize him to tell the story. “All right; I’ll tell you,” he said. “I was sitting alongside the road, and I heard Him coming. I knew He was somewheres about, and I knew it was Him as soon as I heard Him coming.”
“How did you know it?”
“I don’t know–I just knew it. The people were all saying, ‘Here He is’ and ‘There He goes.’I just thought maybe He can cure me of my blindness. I called out to Him, ‘Have mercy on me!’They told me to be still, but I wouldn’t. I just kept on calling, ‘Have mercy on me!’”
“What did you do that for?”
“I don’t know. Well, He stopped by-and-by and He says, ‘What do you want me to do to you?’I
says, ‘Open my eyes.’”
“What did He do then?”
“He talked with the people for a while. I don’t remember what He said; then, after a little bit, I felt Him rub something on my eyes that felt like wet dirt. Then He said to me, ‘Go wash yourself.’There was a stream of water running there, and a bank down from the road. I went down the bank and acrost a bit of field. I kneeled down by the water. One of my hands was in the water–it was that cold it cut like a knife. Then I washed my face. I thought I had gone crazy.”
“Could you see then?”
“I could, indeed, Mr. Gilderman–so help me God, I could! I didn’t know what had happened to me at first. It just seemed as though my eyes was all broke up into pieces, and they moved about as I moved. I got up and ran away, and as I did so all these pieces seemed to move about. I thought I’d gone crazy.”
“Come, Henry!” called Mrs. Gilderman.
“In a moment, dear. Where was this?”
“Over yonder.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find Him if I can.”
“Who? The Man who healed you?”
“Yes.”
Gilderman had been feeling in his vest pocket. “Here, Tom,” he said, “take this.”
Kettle shrank back. “I don’t want your money,” he said, resentfully, and then he turned away.
Gilderman, as he went back to the carriage, wondered passively why Tom Kettle did not take the money. He felt that he could not just understand the workings of the man’s soul.
X. A VOICE FROM THE DEAD
THE DE WITTS were cousins of the Gildermans. Nearly all the great metropolitan plutocratic families were either allied or connected with one another, and the De Witts and the Gildermans were doubly connected by marriage in the generation of Gilderman’s father.