I

Sunday after Sunday Hodder looked upon the same picture, the winter light filtering through emblazoned windows, falling athwart stone pillars, and staining with rich colours the marble of the centre aisle.  The organ rolled out hymns and anthems, the voices of the white robed choir echoed among the arches.  And Hodder’s eye, sweeping over the decorous congregation, grew to recognize certain landmarks:  Eldon Parr, rigid at one end of his empty pew; little Everett Constable, comfortably, but always pompously settled at one end of his, his white-haired and distinguished-looking wife at the other.  The space between them had once been filled by their children.  There was Mr. Ferguson, who occasionally stroked his black whiskers with a prodigious solemnity; Mrs. Ferguson, resplendent and always a little warm, and their daughter Nan, dainty and appealing, her eyes uplifted and questioning.

The Plimptons, with their rubicund and aggressively healthy offspring, were always in evidence.  And there was Mrs. Larrabbee.  What between wealth and youth, independence and initiative, a widowhood now emerged from a mourning unexceptionable, an elegance so unobtrusive as to border on mystery, she never failed to agitate any atmosphere she entered, even that of prayer.  From time to time, Hodder himself was uncomfortably aware of her presence, and he read in her upturned face an interest which, by a little stretch of the imagination, might have been deemed personal . . . .

Another was Gordon Atterbury, still known as “young Gordon,” though his father was dead, and he was in the vestry.  He was unmarried and forty-five, and Mrs. Larrabbee had said he reminded her of a shrivelling seed set aside from a once fruitful crop.  He wore, invariably, checked trousers and a black cutaway coat, eyeglasses that fell off when he squinted, and were saved from destruction by a gold chain.  No wedding or funeral was complete without him.  And one morning, as he joined Mr. Parr and the other gentlemen who responded to the appeal, “Let your light so shine before men,” a strange, ironical question entered the rector’s mind—­was Gordon Atterbury the logical product of those doctrines which he, Hodder, preached with such feeling and conviction?

None, at least, was so fervent a defender of the faith, so punctilious in all observances, so constant at the altar rail; none so versed in rubrics, ritual, and canon law; none had such a knowledge of the Church fathers.  Mr. Atterbury delighted to discuss them with the rector at the dinner parties where they met; none was more zealous for foreign missions.  He was the treasurer of St. John’s.

It should undoubtedly have been a consolation to any rector to possess Mr. Atterbury’s unqualified approval, to listen to his somewhat delphic compliments,—­heralded by a clearing of the throat.  He represented the faith as delivered to the saints, and he spoke for those in the congregation to whom it was precious.  Why was it that, to Hodder, he should gradually have assumed something of the aspect of a Cerberus?  Why was it that he incited a perverse desire to utter heresies?