FOUR,* ROADS MAUD-WILDER-GOODWIN FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE " 'GIVE YOU BACK MY MYSTEKIOUS LETTER? OH, IMPOSSIBLE!' " FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE BY MAUD WILDER GOODWIN Aotkar of "Sir Chrirtopher," " Ffit," " Wfeite ," "The Head of a Hundred," etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR I. KELLER NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1903, 1904, by THE CENTURY Co. Publiibed April, 1904 Reprinted June, 1904, July, 1904, August, 1904, October, 1904 TO F. W. CONTENTS PAGE i A MODERN KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL . . 3 n THE FOUR ROADS 17 in ANNE BLYTHE 31 IT THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM .... 50 r OUTWARD BOUND 65 n A TRUST 83 TII MAXWELL NEWTON 103 mi THREE LETTERS 122 ix UP AT THE VILLA 137 x IN WHICH WALFORD LEARNS . . . .154 xi FINE ARTS 176 xii "ONE BEHELD AND DIED" . . . .196 xiii THE COMING SHADOW 217 xrr "ONE DESTROYED THE YOUNG PLANT* " 232 XT ON THE TERRACE 247 XTI AT SANTA CROCE 262 XTII How IT HAPPENED 277 XTIII WHAT THE BISHOP SAID 291 xix His HEART'S DESIRE 307 xx THI MOTING FINGER 324 xxi IL PARADISINO 337 K LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PACK " Give you back my mysterious letter ? Oh, im- possible ! " Frontispiece " Yes, yes," Walford answered, " I do see. I understand perfectly " 39 " Anne," broke in the Bishop's voice, " I want you to know Lady Hawtree Campbell" . . 77 " No ! " thundered Yates, bringing his hand down hard 173 " Would you count it presumption if I thrust my life-problem upon you ?" 21 1 " We will be sorry together " 333 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE PROLOGUE " Four men," says the Talmud, " en- tered paradise : one beheld and died, one lost his senses, one destroyed the young plants, one only entered in peace." FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE A MODERN KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL " The way is long, my children, long and rough, The moon are dreary, and the woods are dark ; But he that creeps from cradle on to grave, Unskilled sare in the velvet course of fortune, Hath misted the discipline of noble hearts." "A GENTLEMAN to see me ? A gentleman, JT\. did you say, Parkins *? " " Y-yes, sir. That is, he looked to be one of the clergy, I think, sir." " Did he give you his name ? " " No, sir. He said you 'd not know him." " Show him up." The black-beetle butler closed the door, and the Bishop reluctantly pushed aside a pile of manuscript on which he had been working. It was irritating to be interrupted at the climax of a peroration ; but the thread of continuance once 4 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE broken, there was no use in resuming work till the interruption was disposed of finally. There- fore the Bishop deliberately uncoiled his attention. First he fixed his eyes upon the ring on his finger, then he took a leisurely look up and down the avenue which ran before his window as straight and uninteresting as a strip of tape. Finally he turned his gaze on the flame of gas which leaped and fluttered from the artificial log in the fire- place. It was seldom that he allowed himself to look at that log, which was an offense to his esthetic eye, and was tolerated only for its unques- tioned convenience. Bishop Alston's mien and bearing suggested not so much the army of the Lord as His diplo- matic service. Nature and time had drawn their tonsure round the Bishop's crown, and a silver fringe fell over his forehead. The eyes beneath looked out small and gray from between narrowed eyelids; but their sharpness was mitigated by benevolent crow's-feet at the corners of the lids. The ears, bent slightly forward, were adapted to catching secrets, and the close-shut mouth to keeping guard over them. The figure was wide at the waist, to the point of straining the waist- coat buttons, and told of one not unfamiliar with flesh-pots. " Come in ! " A KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL 5 This in answer to a second knock, for the Bishop's thoughts had wandered too far afield to respond to the first summons from the outer world. In answer to the call, Parkins ushered in a young man who stood crushing his soft hat ner- vously, evidently hesitating on the threshold, in spite of the invitation to enter. The Bishop rose, looked at the newcomer from over his gold-bowed spectacles, and re- peated : " Come in, Mr. f " " Walford Stuart Walford." There was a slight pause in which the Bishop strove to classify the name in order to fit it with social urbanity or episcopal benevolence. Evi- dently he decided on the latter, for there was a jingle of Peter's keys in his voice as he re- sponded : " And how can I be of service to you ? " " By your counsel, Bishop. I have no personal claim to urge as an excuse for taking up your valuable time; but my grandfather, Archibald Stuart " Here he drew out a note of intro- duction, which Bishop Alston took to the window and read. " Ah ! " murmured the Bishop, adding a shade of warmth to his manner as he felt the social clue 6 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE drop into his fingers. " So Archibald Stuart is your grandfather! We were boys together in the Old Dominion. I knew him well, and liked him as well as I knew him ; but in some way we managed to lose each other : people are so easily lost here at the West a dip in the prairie, and they are gone from sight for years. Archie Stuart a grandfather ! How time flies ! But reminis- cence makes us old fellows tedious. Your grand- father's name is a talisman. Let me ask you again how I can serve you, and of what counsel you stand in need." " I wish to consult you about a course of action that I have set my heart on." " Is it advice or approval that you wish ? " The youth winced, and the Bishop noted it. "Pardon me, Mr. er-er Mr. Walford " Bishop Alston spoke with that hesitating " er " which Providence bestows on dignitaries to en- able them to deliberate without a full stop : " Pardon me, but we shall get on faster if you tell me quite frankly at the outset whether you have definitely resolved to carry out this course of which you speak, or whether you really intend to be swayed by my possible disapproval." " I think it is your consecration more than your approval I am seeking." Unconsciously the young man fingered a black cross hanging A KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL 7 above the clerical waistcoat. " I desire," he rushed on breathlessly, " to dedicate my life to the service of the lepers at Molokai. Damien is dead. There is need of more workers like him." " Yes," said the Bishop, with barely perceptible emphasis, " more workers like him." " But why should not the Anglican Church send forth men as brave as he as willing to renounce self and follow the cross ? " " Self-love," said the Bishop, "has many forms. One of them is altruism." \Valford bit his lip. " Oh," he cried impatiently, "do not trifle with me ! It may be that I am unworthy ; but go I must. By day and by night I can see nothing but those poor wretches, dying there by inches, shut in by a precipice on one side and the sea on the other. In a beautiful spot *? Yes, but what, in God's name, can that matter to them, cooped up, driven from all human companionship, forgotten by their friends, living in a dull loathing of one another! Would it not be a glorious mission to carry even a gleam of light and hope to these outcasts, and, if one must die a leper, to die a martyr too, and a martyr to such a cause *? " The Bishop answered nothing. He was not fol- lowing Walford's impassioned plea very closely. The words of the old prophe* rose to his mind : 8 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE "Weep ye not for the dead . . . : but weep sore for him that goeth away ; for he shall return no more, nor see his native country." Inadvertently his thought found its way to his lips: " What a sacrifice ! " "A sacrifice? Yes; but one I am willing, yes, eager, to make. I have counted the cost." " Where is your home ? " was the Bishop's somewhat unexpected question. " In Alkali." " You have always lived there *? " " No ; I was born at Painted Rock, Arizona, near the Gila River and the Maricopa Divide." " You have traveled *? " " Twice a year from Alkali to Tucson, and of course back and forth from the seminary." If the Bishop smiled it was imperceptible a mere twitching of the muscles about the mouth, instantly suppressed. " You know nothing of Europe, then have never seen either Paris or London, eh ? " " Never." " Nor even New York ? " " Nor even New York." " Then pardon me, but you have not counted the cost. You are willing to give up a life which you have never lived, that is, never tasted in its A KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL 9 plenitude and power. You have lived among your inferiors. I am not a clairvoyant, but I can read your face, and I know the town where you live. All your spiritual nourishment is drawn from books. Of men, men as good as you mor- ally, better than you intellectually, you know nothing." " Do I need to know more than Jesus Christ, and Him crucified?" Walford's eye kindled as though some pres- ence were palpable before him. The Bishop temporized. " Archie Stuart's grandson ! " he exclaimed, as if memory had drifted in like a fog, obscuring the present crisis. The visitor tapped on the under side of the chair with restless finger-ends. At last he burst out afresh : " I am ready to give myself wholly, utterly to the Master's service. Can I do more ? " " Yes." " How ? " " By having more to give." "I I don't think I understand you." " Perhaps not. What I mean is this : You owe it to God to be first of all as much of a man as it lies in you to be, and after that to consecrate your full powers to the high- est good as you see the highest good. You can- 10 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE not tell no man of twenty-five or less can tell where his mission lies, and many bring discredit on the Master's service by setting themselves tasks beyond their strength, and failing ignomini- ously where they might have carried through a smaller undertaking, if they had but gaged their powers rightly." " Ah, it is my strength you doubt ! " " Pardon me again," answered the Bishop, in his gentle, first-aid-to-the-injured manner. " I know you so little I can in no wise estimate you individually; but I have known many young men of about your age, and never one whom I thought justified in making a momentous decision by which his whole after life must be bound." " Yet young men marry." " Yes, more 's the pity too young, most of them. But, after all, that falls in with nature's plan. You are working at cross-purposes with nature. Oh, I do not forget the noble army of martyrs, and St. Sebastian, with his boy's body pierced and bleeding. You would face martyr- dom stanchly I read that in your eye ; but what you purpose is something far harder a renunciation of life and all that makes it worth while, not once for all, to awake in bliss to ever- lasting rewards, but day after day shut off from all the dear, familiar sights and sounds." A KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL 11 " Yet He has promised to be with those vrho go forth in His name " The Bishop looked keenly at the flushed cheek, and the broad brow from which the hair had been shaken in an impatient tangle. Twice he half stretched out the fingers of benediction; then he drew them back and laid his hand on a letter, the second in a pile at the end of his desk. " Come," he said in his gentlest tones, " you know the Knights of the Grail served their novi- tiate before they were found worthy of the sacred quest. Now I ask of you a like period of proba- tion. I have here a letter from a rector, a friend of mine at the East. He fills the pulpit of St. Simeon Stylites in New York, and he writes that he is overworked and is seeking an assistant. He wants a Western man, a man conspicuous in energy and organizing power, and asks if I can suggest any one. He speaks of haste. Here is your opportunity will you go ? " The Bishop turned the ring on his finger as i like Solomon's, it could compel the truth from him whose eyes fell upon it. The young man stared first at the ring ab- sently, then at the wearer keenly. He too was weighing motives. " I will go," he said ; " but first will you ac- cept my vows ? " 12 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE "No, no; you are neither strong enough nor weak enough for vows. Make what resolutions you choose." " Resolutions ! Ah, those are weak ! " " Only when they are weakly made. If hell is paved with resolutions, heaven is vaulted with them." This sentiment struck the Bishop as rather good, and while he was uttering it he de- termined to use it in his sermon. It might prove worth the interruption. " If," he continued, " at the end of eighteen months you are sure of your- self, come back, and I will receive your vows. More than that I will help you forward on the glorious path which you have chosen." Walford looked his gratitude. He could not trust himself to speak. " Let me see," said the Bishop. " This is November; how soon could you make your arrangements to start for New York *? " " To-morrow." " Good ! I like promptness. And have you any money for the journey *? " " I have enough for everything." " Good again ! " The Bishop had a dawning fear that he might have rushed into too impulsive a confidence in this fiery young disciple. The sense of financial backing gave solidity to aspiration. A KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL 13 Walford rose. " Sit down ! " his superior commanded, as he drew out a sheet of note-paper. / " I am writing a letter of introduction," he explained cordially. " I would rather have you make your impression on Dr. Milner personally than through correspondence. If he appoints you, you will secure the rare privilege of living and working for a year or more by the side of a man who shows forth the beauty of holiness not only with his lips but in his life." While the Bishop wrote, the young man looked about him with interest rather than ap- proval. To the soul keyed to sacrifice, luxury is childishness, and Walford experienced a vague scorn of the soft blend of Persian rugs and tapes- tried walls. What right had men with baubles such as these when their fellows were suffering, agonizing, dying ? Yet unconsciously his starved esthetic sense was being fed, and he found him- self rested and refreshed. Hitherto his sense of the beautiful had found vent in the enjoyment of nature alone. It had appeared to him a matter of course that the indoor world should be full of hideous shapes and crude colors. It seemed almost immoral that they should be otherwise; yet here he rose and walked to the book-shelves. 14 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE "Ah," exclaimed the Bishop, with more enthu- siasm than he had yet shown, "you are looking at my books, eh ? " And rising, he, too, crossed the room to the shelves and drew out a volume bound in blue levant. "Baxter's 'Saint's Rest,'" he explained, " bound by Riviere, and one of my treasures. See the delicacy of that tooling on the inner edge alternate crosses and crowns " "Very appropriate," Walford assented; but the subject had little interest for him, and he swiftly reverted to his old hostile attitude of mind the protest of ethics against esthetics, a struggle nineteen hundred years old. The Bishop was quick to feel the indifference of the younger man's manner. His books were his children, and he was hypersensitive as to the treatment which they received. He turned to the table, hastily blotted and folded his note, and handed it to Walford, who perceived at once that the interview was ended. " One thing more," the Bishop said. "I advise you for these coming eighteen months to put Molokai and its lepers wholly out of your mind. Look at them as if they were the last of your life, and resolve to live them to the full. At the end of the time we have set, come back if you will, and then then we '11 talk of the future." Bishop Alston, accompanying Walford to the A KNIGHT OF THE GRAIL 15- door, laid his hands with kindly emphasis upon the youthful shoulders. " Don't think," he said, " that I fail to sympa- thize with your hopes and aims ! It is a great work that you have in view, a noble work, and I honor you from my heart for your pur- pose." Walford bowed in silence, and the door closed after his retreating footsteps. The Bishop mused for some time with bent head, his elbows resting on the table, and his delicate fingers running through the thin fringe of silver hair. He pulled toward him the half-finished sermon which had been thrust aside at the stranger's entrance and strove to pick up again the thread of his discourse ; but it would not do. A real life-problem had come between him and the aca- demic argument, and he could not get rid of its bulk and the shadow that it cast. * He acknowledged to himself that he had gone beyond his warrant in advising this young man on such short acquaintance. Would it not have been better, more in keeping with his office, to have received Walford's vows, to have encircled him with strengthening influences, to have sent him on his sacred errand of help and mercy, and followed him with blessing? " No," said the Bishop, finally, aloud, as was 16 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE often his wont in talking with himself; " he must prove all things before he can have strength to hold fast that which is good. I think I will write to Anne about him. He has never known a woman like her. What will he think of Anne, I wonder"? Will he ever come back?" The Bishop meditated for a long time with folded arms and bent head. Then he drew out a fresh tablet of paper, and, after consulting his Testament, wrote at the head of the page : "And he bearing his cross went forth (John xix. 17)." Having written the text, he returned the paper to his drawer and turned the key. " There," he said ; " some day I will write a sermon from that text some day when I know what this man does with his life. Archie Stuart's grandson ! Will he ever come back ? " " Parkins, turn off the gas from the log." II THE FOUR ROADS " Ai a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." WALFORD had spent six months in New York, and already he measured his life by them. Memory declined to visualize the little Western town where he had lived through two-and-twenty years of his youth, never ques- tioning the wealth of its resources. Why should he have questioned it? There were rows upon rows of comfortable houses where the residents were supremely occupied in residing. There were new buildings constantly going up, more commodious and no uglier than their predeces- sors, and there was a steady growth of the census report, which brought swelling pride to the heart of every loyal citizen of Alkali. As he looked back upon it all now, it was as if through a veil of the dust of the plains. The present alone had tangible reality. At twenty- five he felt that he had just begun to live. 17 i8 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE New York " haunted him like a passion." He felt an intoxication in its very air, and he threw himself eagerly into each passing experience. He had visited every picture-gallery; he knew every orchestral program by heart ; he had dined in rich men's palaces ; he had heard great orators and felt the thrill of their speech. But, after all, there was nothing like the city streets. They had taught him more than all the rest, and he was ac- customed to walk up and down the great thor- oughfares from Broadway to the Bowery, in a delighted absorption, studying the myriad types of men drifting around him. On this Sunday morning he was on his way from church to keep a luncheon engagement at a club, and as he strolled up Fifth Avenue, un- consciously he caught the gaiety of the crowd which surged up and down in all colors of the rainbow, like a flight of butterflies sunning them- selves in the soft spring air. At a broad window of the club toward which Walford's steps were tending, two men sat in deep leather arm-chairs, viewing the scene be- neath them with lazy enjoyment. " How intensely alive it all is ! " said one of the spectators, a tall man with thinly parted, colorless hair. " It gives me a qualm to think of tearing my- self away from a show like this to go to a funeral." THE FOUR ROADS 19 " You going to a funeral this afternoon, Flem- ing ? I wonder if it 's mine." " You don't look like it, Yates." The speaker smiled as he watched the flushed face and stout figure opposite. Yates wore a scarf-pin in the shape of a telephone mouthpiece, yet he had his good points. "Oh," he explained with superfluous exactness, " I did n't mean mine in that sense ; I mean the one I 'm going to the services in memory of my uncle, Richard Biythe." " Curious ! " exclaimed a third man, dropping the newspaper which he had been reading, and drawing up his chair. " I am going there, too. I was Blythe's physician awhile ago, before I gave up practice." Fleming chuckled. " * Earth covers the doctor's errors,' Newton," he said. " It would be a lucky thing for Biythe if it covered the errors of the patients/' Newton an- swered, and then added, " I forgot that you said he was your uncle, Yates." " Don't apologize ! You can't hurt my feel- ings by any remarks. I '11 tell you what I think when I 've read the will." " His will is in my box at the safe-deposit 20 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE company," said Fleming, quietly. " I have told my clerk to send you a copy to-morrow." Yates opened his eyes wide. " I did n't know you knew my uncle so well. Have you been his counsel long *? " " Ten years or so. Excuse me ! I must look out for a guest who is coming Mr. Walford. You know him, Newton ? " " I have seen him somewhere, but I can't re- member where." " He 's the new assistant rector at St. Simeon's. You have probably seen his picture in the Sun- day papers, bracketed with Dr. Milner's, this morning. He 's another recruit for the service this afternoon, and lunches with me here first. Blythc was a parishioner, you know." As Fleming spoke, the other men turned their glance toward the slender, dark-eyed man who entered the room preceded by a uniformed bell- boy, and threaded his way among the groups of idlers. He looked about him inquiringly, until his search ended in Fleming, and he smiled il- luminatingly as Fleming moved to meet him. " That smile ought to be worth ten thousand a year to a clergyman," Newton said to Yates under his breath, rising to greet the newcomer. " Dr. Newton, Mr. Walford and Mr. Yates," said Fleming. THE FOUR ROADS 21 The men bowed : Yates like an American, as if conferring an honor, Newton like a European, as if receiving one. " We were just speaking of the funeral this afternoon. We are all going Dr. Newton was Mr. Blythe's physician and Mr. Yates is his nephew." " Indeed ! " said Walford, non-committally ; then turning to Yates, " Your uncle was a liberal supporter of our church charities/' " A good advertisement, that giving to chari- ties," Yates answered. "Uncle Richard never gave anything that people did n't hear of, I guess." " Oh, come, Yates," Fleming observed, " that 's not fair play. There is always more than an even chance that the living are speaking ill of you, so that what you say of them is only give and take ; but when their meuths are shut, yours ought to be." " Yes," said Newton, " silence in regard to the dead is an easy form of charity ; but I pity the clergyman called upon for a post-mortem eulogy. There 's where your church service is such a refuge. Fancy a man called upon to eulogize Richard Blythe, to tell what a benefit to man- kind his example had been, and what a joy it would be to meet him again in heaven ! " 22 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE " Heaven ! Does any one believe in it now- adays ? Excuse me, Mr. Walford ; I forgot the cloth for the moment." It was Fleming who spoke. Walford forced himself to smile. Had he not resolved to be all things to all men, and was not this a phase of life and thought with which he was bound to come in touch, at least from the outside ? " Please go on," he said. " Is it your opinion that most people do not believe in heaven *? " " No more than they do in the Beatitudes or the Golden Rule," said Yates, going further than Fleming had intended. " It 's a golden rule that won't work both ways," he murmured, ready to sacrifice his repu- tation for intelligence for the sake of changing the subject; but the topic was a Frankenstein creation which, once called into existence, would not down at the bidding of its creator. " I don't suppose," said Newton, fixing his hawk eyes on Fleming, " that one in a hundred of these people who have just come out of their churches could give an intelligible account of his idea of heaven, or even of what he would wish it to be." " * Heaven is the vision of fulfilled desire,' " said Fleming, wondering if anything short of an THE FOUR ROADS 23 order for drinks would drive Frankenstein's man back to his lair. " All desires *? " Newton asked in his rasping voice. Fleming shrugged his shoulders. " The words are Omar's, not mine," he said. But Newton returned to the charge. "Tell us, Yates, what would your idea of heaven be?" As he spoke, Dr. Newton settled back in his chair and lighted a cigar, while he looked at Yates through half-closed lids, curiously, as he would have inspected a lizard or a beetle. He noted the angle extending outward from the temples to the base of the jaw, the puffy circles about the eyes, and he felt that it would greatly interest him to know what conception of the spiritual world lay imbedded in that individ- uality. " Well," said Yates, playing with his watch- chain, " I believe in taking your good times while you can get them here on earth. I like yachts and horses and automobiles and all that " " That is," said Fleming, giving up the con- test and yielding to the inevitable, "given plenty of money, you 'd guarantee to make a heaven of your own. What would you say, Newton*? What would your heaven be ? " 24 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE " I confess I have no views of the future state. I hold no chair of eschatology, and my ambi- tions for this world are quite modest." " For instance "? " The question roused Newton to a new energy. He sat up straight and buttoned his rough tweed coat close over his chest. His fine bearing and ill-fitting clothes gave him a curious effect of being a cross between a prince incognito and a tramp cognito. His eyes shot fire from under his shaggy eye- brows as he answered : " My ambition *? Simply to put myself to school to learn something of the laws under which we live. Here we are, several hundred millions of atoms clinging to a small dependency of a small sun. The breath of life lasts with each of us a mere fraction of the time it takes for a ray of light from the distant stars to reach us. Now, with such an ephemeral exis- tence, nothing seems worth while except to oc- cupy ourselves with guesses at truth and some effort to solve the world-enigma. " But, after all," said Fleming, " that is a ques- tion of duty, not of happiness." " I can't imagine finding happiness in any- thing which we realize as lasting only for a moment. We must hook our lives on to the eternities to give them any significance. Know- THE FOUR ROADS 25 ledge, after all, is a coral island, built on millions of dead workers." " But this does not touch the question of indi- vidual pleasure." " Oh," said Newton, " if you ask what my idea of pleasure is, I should say work. If you ask what reward, I should say recognition of my work." " Fame ? " " Not what most men mean by that. It would not gratify me in the least to see my name in five-inch letters on the front of a morning news- paper, still less to see my picture " Here he paused, noting Walford's conscious flush, and then hurled himself toward his next remark, care- less of connection : " Jury of my peers, that 's what I wish to be tried by, and I am willing to accept the verdict. Come, Fleming, it 's your turn." " Oh, leave me out ! I have no imagination." "You are a fortunate man," said Newton. " Imagination is death to accurate deductions : it is a nuisance. Did you ever watch an assayer weigh a grain of gold *? He puts the grain on the tiny scale, and then he draws down a glass case over it, so that there shall be no vibration of air to disturb the balance. That 's the way we ought to measure truth in a dead calm. In- 26 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE stead of which, we turn imagination loose to blow a gale over it. A nuisance I call it, an unmiti- gated nuisance " " There I differ with you," Fleming answered. " Imagination is given to a man to console him for what he is not, as humor is given to him to console him for what he is. A man who has both is very near heaven already." " But your ambition *? " " Bless your inquiring soul, Newton, I have n't any ! Time was, before my eyes gave out, when I expected to see the name of Blair Fleming writ large on the bill-board of history; but next to a career, the best thing is a good excuse for not achieving one." " Have you no hopes ? " " Hopes *? Yes, I have hopes of getting through life with as little interference with or from my neighboring atoms as possible." " But your idea of heaven *? " "A land where I should never be bored Utopian, you see." " Perhaps," said Newton, giving up Fleming and turning to the latest comer, " Mr. Walford will give us his views." Walford, who till now had been an interested and amused, if somewhat shocked, onlooker, found himself suddenly dragged into the melee. THE FOUR ROADS 27 "I I am afraid I have no views worth con- tributing," he stammered, awkwardly fingering the prayer-book in his hand. "Oh, well, now," said Fleming, "you know we don't expect an inspired account; we only wish to know what you think of when you say 4 heaven.' " " Shall I tell seriously ? " " Of course." " Then I should say that it was a place where all men lived in obedience to the will of God, and that my highest heaven would lie in the thought that I had led them there." " In short," said Newton, setting his tense, positive lips argumentatively, "your idea of heaven is influence ? " " Influence for good yes, I suppose it re- duces itself to that," Walford answered in evi- dent embarrassment. Fleming, perceiving that his guest was ill at ease in being thus crowded into a corner, stopped wiping his eye-glasses, stooped forward in order to thrust his handkerchief into his coat-tail pocket, and said : " Suppose for heaven we substitute paradise that word is depolarized, and we may speak our minds more freely. To Yates, paradise means money. Newton declares for work and the 28 FOUR ROADS TO PARADISE credit for it. And you want influence influ- ence for good. I wonder if any of you will attain your paradise." Walford noticed that Fleming had really said nothing of himself, and he would have liked to ask further ; but something forbade. The young clergyman had learned many things in the few months of his stay in New York. Men here intrenched themselves behind a barrier of re- serve. What was sympathy in the West became curiosity in the East, and it was not permitted to inquire too closely. He had noticed, too, how much less strenuously for the most part men in the metropolis held their beliefs. Opinions seemed to be flats, not homesteads. They were shorn of association and sacredness, and liable to be changed at convenience, or were at least open to alteration on any promise of betterment. He was not sure that he preferred it to the provincial- ism where " I have always thought " was reason good. To him it savored of levity; and yet he could not deny that it gave a sense of spacious- ness to talk. Newton irritated him. The doctor had a way of saying : " Is that your point of view*? How very interesting ! " which reduced one to the status of a specimen. But Fleming was differ- ent. Walford felt that he understood that long, THE FOUR ROADS 29 lazy man with the colorless hair, and to compre- hend is to possess. Yet he was troubled by Fleming's views and unreligious attitude of mind. He wished devoutly that his influence for good might begin with Fleming. His thoughts were interrupted by seeing Yates yawn, first surreptitiously, then openly, and finally rise and look at his watch. "Do you lunch at the club, too, Newton?" Yates asked. " I presume you are in town for the dayV" " Yes," Newton answered. " I have moved to the suburbs for work ; but for relaxation New York is the only place." " And your wife does she like life on Long Island