第8章

A general, for example, uniformed and in the saddle, advancing through the streets with his staff in the proud wake of his division's massed walls of bayonets, cannot be imagined as quailing at the glance thrown at him by his tailor on the sidewalk.Similarly, a man invested with sacerdotal authority, who baptizes, marries, and buries, who delivers judgments from the pulpit which may not be questioned in his hearing, and who receives from all his fellow-men a special deference of manner and speech, is in the nature of things prone to see the grocer's book and the butcher's bill through the little end of the telescope.

The Wares at the outset had thought it right to trade as exclusively as possible with members of their own church society.This loyalty became a principal element of martyrdom.Theron had his creditors seated in serried rows before him, Sunday after Sunday.Alice had her critics consolidated among those whom it was her chief duty to visit and profess friendship for.These situations now began, by regular gradations, to unfold their terrors.

At the first intimation of discontent, the Wares made what seemed to them a sweeping reduction in expenditure.

When they heard that Brother Potter had spoken of them as "poor pay," they dismissed their hired girl.

A little later, Theron brought himself to drop a laboriously casual suggestion as to a possible increase of salary, and saw with sinking spirits the faces of the stewards freeze with dumb disapprobation.Then Alice paid a visit to her parents, only to find her brothers doggedly hostile to the notion of her being helped, and her father so much under their influence that the paltry sum he dared offer barely covered the expenses of her journey.

With another turn of the screw, they sold the piano she had brought with her from home, and cut themselves down to the bare necessities of life, neither receiving company nor going out.They never laughed now, and even smiles grew rare.

By this time Theron's sermons, preached under that stony glare of people to whom he owed money, had degenerated to a pitiful level of commonplace.As a consequence, the attendance became once more confined to the insufficient membership of the church, and the trustees complained of grievously diminished receipts.When the Wares, grown desperate, ventured upon the experiment of trading outside the bounds of the congregation, the trustees complained again, this time peremptorily.

Thus the second year dragged itself miserably to an end.

Nor was relief possible, because the Presiding Elder knew something of the circumstances, and felt it his duty to send Theron back for a third year, to pay his debts, and drain the cup of disciplinary medicine to its dregs.