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PORTIA MOORE

Moore

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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About the Author Also by Portia Moore

RAIN

Ifell in love with a monster.

I thought I was Cinderella when in reality, I'm Belle, and the man I loved—thought I loved, and who I thought loved me in return—was just a lie. My prince is really a real-life beast, and not the one in the Disney version, either. Even now, lying with my face buried in my pillow to try and block it all out, I can still hear his words from the night before echoing in my head.

OfcourseIhaveotherwomen.Iwantthem,andthat'smyright.

All the times that I dreamed about my future, I never imagined this. From the outside, it looks like a fairy-tale, but now I know that I'm just trapped, in a modern-day version of a palace with a prince who's anything but charming.

I wish it were a nightmare, that I just woke up from a terrible dream, but it isn't a nightmare. It's real, and this is my life now.

They'rejustfun.Adiversion.

IfyouwouldjustbegratefulforallI'vegivenyou…

Do I need to remind you of everything that you'll lose without me?

You'regoingtobemywife.We'restillgettingmarried. Whothe hell amI marrying?

I don't know this man, and I maybe never did. I only knew the carefully crafted façade that I ignored the cracks in. Now I'm

trapped, locked in a beautiful prison with a handsome, charming jailer.

I should leave.

I need to leave right now. It's what I planned on doing a dozen times last night, but reality hit me in the face each time I tried to think past walking out the front door.

I have nothing without Vincent.

My father is dying of cancer, and the only person who can pay for the treatment that might save him is Vincent. My mother will have to take off of work to take care of him—who is going to step in and pay her bills in the meantime? Her sick leave, vacation days, and state medical leave aren't going to help much, if at all. Vincent's money is what allows me to send her the funds every month that Vincent just oh-so-generously offered to increase while my father is sick.

And my sister. Thinking of Erin makes me want to cry all over again. She's about to graduate high school—she'll be ready to apply to colleges soon. Her outlook is going to be just as bleak and hopeless as mine was at her age; if I leave, I can't help them anymore. Maybe even worse, because my mother might lose the house after all of this—she could lose everything.

Staying with Vincent solves everything for everyone except me. But they need my money, ourmoney.

I laugh at myself. It's a joke because none of it is really mine. The checking account is joint, but Vincent has already proven more than once that he has no problem closing and reopening accounts, moving our money, and canceling cards without asking or even telling me in advance. It's money that I'm allowed to use, but in the end, it's hismoney.

I have to be smart, but the truth is that I can't see any way out of this anymore. I've tried to leave before, and Vincent sucked me right back in with his promises and his lies. HowcouldIhave been so blind? Now I can't even try to leave, because it's not just about me anymore. And I can't help but think, now that everything is out in the open, that everything is about to get so much worse.

He's given himself permission to be his true self now, the person he hid before. But now, there's no reason for him to hide since the

cards are all out there. This is better for him, not me. The truth is, nothing about this was ever for me to be happy, no matter what I once believed. I made him happy, for some reason, and now he expects me to fall in line.

I slowly sit up in bed, burying my face in my hands. I have a massive headache from crying—my whole body aches. My heart is broken, my pride shattered. At least Vincent can't read my mind yet I have no doubt he'd be even more furious if he could.

He's not in bed, and I'm thankful for that. Last night I pretended. I tried to remember the man who I thought he was, the one who I thought would love, protect, and take care of me. I pretended that man—the one I now know is just made-up--was the man beside me. I don't know what I'll do when he wants to be inside of me again. All the desire I had has been replaced with a sinking pit in my stomach of how he's not mine, but I'm his,and I have no idea how to change it. I don't know where Vincent is now, if he's still home and just in some other part of this stupidly huge penthouse, or gone to work, or to another flower. The thought of that last possibility still brings tears to my eyes. Still, I'm grateful that I have time to pull myself together, even if it's just a few minutes. To figure out who I need to pretend to be, in order to survive this.

I'm supposed to be marrying him. Thinking of that, of how I'm going to have to pretend forever, fills me with such a bleak emptiness that I feel like disappearing, like dying, like giving up. But I can't do that, either. My presence in Vincent's life, and my compliance with his desires and whims and orders, is the only thing keeping my family cared for.

I take a quick shower, throwing on the silk robe that I know he likes afterward, and take a deep breath before heading to the kitchen. I don't know if Vincent will be there, and the nervousness feels like a weight in my stomach the entire way downstairs.

I'm grateful to see that he isn't, but April, my bodyguard that I know now is really just a glorified babysitter, is waiting there instead, sitting at the table with a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. She glances up when I walk in and quickly stands, crossing the room. I think back to when she first showed up and how stupid I was to not

see the glaring red flag then—that she's not a guard, but a watcher, to make sure I'm behaving and obeying.

"Good morning, Ms. Carlisle," she says quietly. "Mr. Jamison left a note for you."

I take the folded piece of paper numbly from her hand. A few months ago, I would have been elated, excited to open it up and see what sweet message he left for me before going off to his meetings for the day. Now I can just feel my stomach twisting into knots; my appetite was completely gone. I don't know how I'm ever going to get used to this, that the man who twenty-four hours ago I believed I was madly in love with, and he with me, could have betrayed me so completely.

Poppy,

Whenyou'vefinishedyourbreakfast,you'retogotothegymforan hour.You'llwanttobeabletofitintoyourweddingdress.Iexpect youtobethemostbeautifulbrideanyoneinthiscityhaseverseen. Thecookhasalreadyleftapreppedmealforyou. Vincent

I can feel my face turning red. I'm a size four and have been since I was sixteen. Sure, I could probably use some exercise just to be healthier, but how can he say this to me?

Howcouldhedoanyofthistome?

I reluctantly make my way towards the fridge. I'm pretty sure there's a leftover egg, cheese, and bacon sandwich from my favorite breakfast place in there. When I open up the refrigerator, I see that it's gone. And not just that all of the foods that I like and picked out at the store have disappeared overnight. My favorite doughnuts, the dip that I got for chips for our movie night, the cherry Coke that I always keep there.—it's all been replaced with bottles of water, fruit, low-calorie plain Greek yogurt, and prepped overnight oats in individually labeled plastic containers. To my horror, I see the same thing has been done for lunch as well. All the deli meat, condiments, and other fattening foods are gone, replaced by vegetables,

avocado, and awful prepped meals…I can only imagine what's in them.

I yank open the freezer and see the same thing—all of the ice cream is gone. There are low-fat fruit bars in there now.

Before I can stop myself, I burst into tears. I can't help it because it all happened so fast, without warning, and it feels completely overwhelming. I grew up with an empty fridge, without the foods I liked, and sometimes not even enough food at all. Since I moved out on my own, grocery shopping was always my favorite day of the week because even if we were broke, I could at least get myself a couple of treats and make sure I had food. And since I'd lived with Vincent and had access to an unlimited grocery budget, I'd admittedly gone a little crazy with the rich desserts and fattening foods--but I still fit into my jeans!

But it obviously doesn't matter. What I want doesn't matter. Everything is Vincent's rules now, and it sends a shock of anxiety through me that makes me start to sob harder, the tears welling up in my throat and choking me. I hit the refrigerator with my fist once and then a second time even harder before I hear April clear her throat.

Shit.

I'd forgotten that she was in the room, and at that moment, my humiliation feels complete. I wipe at my face as quickly as I can, trying to regain my composure, but when I finally work up the courage to turn around and look at her, an expression that I can't quite read crosses April's face. I can feel the awkwardness between us, and it's plain that she's incredibly uncomfortable.

She backs up quickly towards the door, clearly intent on stepping out, even though I know very well that she's not supposed to leave me alone. "I’ll just…give you some time to yourself, Ms. Carlisle,” she says and quickly disappears from the room.

The despair and unhappiness, and anxiety overwhelm me. I take one more look at the fridge, the door still hanging open, before I

drop down to the tiled floor, back against the cabinets, and try not to hyperventilate as I start crying all over again.

I MANAGE, somehow, to pull myself together in time to make it to the meeting with the trainer. The building we live in has a gym, probably nicer and more well-equipped than anything in the city, although I wouldn’t know. I never had the money to have a gym membership before Vincent, much less a trainer. When I did them, any workouts I did were YouTube videos or Mallory shouting instructions at me from what she’d pulled up on her phone.

A flash of almost painful nostalgia slices through me. It seems ungrateful that I can’t help but miss those days, the ones where we sweated in our poorly air-conditioned, tiny apartment, doing sit-ups and planks and whatever else and then immediately downing a bag of chips afterward while we watched shitty reality TV. But how can I not, knowing everything I know now, knowing the truth behind the glamorous life that has seemingly been handed to me on a silver— no, a goldenplatter?

At the end of the day, none of that matters, though. My family needs Vincent’s money and connections. I want to believe that there’s a way out of this, but I can’t see it. Not right now.

Maybe I can delay the wedding. I think wildly as I take the elevator down to the recreation floor, where the gym, indoor pool, and sauna are located. MaybeIcan convinceVincent,somehow, to put it off until my father is better . And then it won’t matter if I call thewholethingoff.

The trainer is waiting for me in the gym, and I’m momentarily taken aback. She’s a tall woman, easily six feet if she’s an inch, with a side shave and the rest of her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. I’ve never seen a woman so muscular—she’s clearly a bodybuilder. She looks more like she trains soldiers for the military than women needing to look more slender in their wedding dresses. I’m immediately intimidated by her. If it were up to me, I’d run in the

opposite direction. But I don’t have those kinds of choices anymore. So I walk in, take a deep breath, and hold out my hand. “Hi,” I say, willing my voice not to shake. “I’m Rain.”

“Nice to meet you.” Her voice is clear, firm, and professional, with a hint of a Russian accent. “I’m Alexandria, but you can call me Alex.”

The sound of her accent hits me, and for a brief second, I feel a fresh wave of nostalgia, but this time for an entirely different reason. It takes me instantly back to high school, to the boy I first loved, to the sound of his mother’s voice in their warm kitchen, with a steak pie baking in the oven. I can almost smell it for a moment, the sweet floury scent of pie crust and savory aroma of meat, the lingering hint of engine oil on his skin, and the smell of laundry detergent on his mother’s apron. It makes me feel almost dizzy for a moment, transporting me back to a time that I, for the most part, have succeeded in not thinking about anymore.

It passes just as quickly, leaving nothing but the hint of an old, familiar ache in my chest. I shake my head, bringing myself back to the present, and force a smile onto my face. “Nice to meet you too, Alex,” I tell her. “So, what do you have planned for me today?”

Over the next hour, I find out exactly what she has planned for me. Boy, do I ever find out. In my entire life, I’ve never done a workout like what this woman puts me through. She puts me on the treadmill for twenty minutes to “warm-up,” barking at me to pick up the pace every three minutes until I’m panting and sweaty. She shows me exercises I’ve never even heard of, all of them involving weights. Then it’s back on the treadmill for another twenty minutes, back to the weights, and back to the treadmill again. By the time it’s over, an hour and a half later, and she’s got me stretching on a mat with a foam roller, I’m pretty sure that I’m in hell.

“You’ll meet me here five days a week, Monday through Friday,” she begins as I half sit, half lay on the mat panting, and I stare at her, unable to say anything. I think I’ve actually lost the ability to speak.

Five days? Is she crazy?

“You’ll do an hour of cardio on Saturdays, as well as a private yoga class with my co-trainer Maria, with one rest day on Sundays,” she continues. I feel like I might throw up. I’ve never worked out this hard in my life! I feel like I’m going to die, and I’m supposed to do this five days a week pluscardio and yoga?

It’s clear Alex isn’t joking, though. There’s not a trace of humor in her no-nonsense expression or in her tone. “Your meal plan for this week will be emailed to you,” she tells me while I’m still trying to balance on the foam roller. “There are instructions in that email for an app that you’ll download, which you can use to log all of your meals and snacks. Mr. Jamison had me send a copy of the meal plan to the house manager so that the meals can all be prepared or ordered for you in advance. You won’t need to do anything other than eat them at the appropriate times.”

I feel like crying all over again. It’s not like I’ve never felt like I should probably try to eat a little healthier, but the idea that I’m being forced into this makes me want to burst into tears. Not to mention the fact that I like going out to eat or ordering takeout to have at home. One of the perks of being with Vincent has always been the insanely good food that I suddenly had access to. Now he’s going to be tracking and watching everything I eat, like some kind of a jailer instead of a fiancé. It makes me feel desperate and scared, like I’m a little kid again with no way to help my mother afford more groceries for the week.

I hate this feeling more than anything. But right now, there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m not about to let this terrifying woman see how upset I am. So, I just give her a tight smile and hope that she assumes my expression is because all of my muscles feel as if they’ve been turned to liquid.

“Sure,” I tell her agreeably. “I’ll check for it as soon as I get home.”

ZACH

Nothing starts off how you think it will. My career sure as hell didn’t. When you watch TV shows, it’s all action--a meteoric rise, excitement, and shoot-outs. That was my picture of what it would be like to work for the FBI, but it’s actually a lot more paperwork and desk duty and a lot less chasing down bad guys. I’ve never even fired my weapon outside of the range.

Everything is about to change, though. All the things I’ve imagined—the accolades, the pay raises, the satisfaction of knowing I’m ridding the world of scum and making it a better place, begins with this case.

It starts with taking down Vincent Jamison.

I was given three days to pore over the files I’d been given—both the one on Vincent Jamison and the one detailing my cover--how to behave, what would be expected of me, the persona I was expected to inhabit for the next several months. I was quizzed endlessly by Detectives Bellona and Simpson until I could answer every question they threw at me naturally and smoothly, in any possible way curious, agitated, angry, prying. I knew they were preparing me for the eventuality that I might be interrogated, and I knew that to be successful, it would have to be perfect. It really drove home the danger that I was putting myself in.

This isn’t a joke, and if it all goes wrong, there might not be anyone to come and scoop me up and pull me out. Bellona is going

undercover with me in a separate role; she made it clear that the job was the priority. If saving me threatened that—especially if it was my fault—well, the official line was that they wouldn’t leave an agent behind. But I wasn’t stupid enough to think that was always the case. We all know the job and the risks.

I was all ready to catch my flight and go undercover. And then I got a phone call from my aunt, just after I got back to my room post-run.

I could tell that she’d been crying when I answered it.

“What’s going on?” I tried to keep my voice calm. “Did something happen?”

“It’s your father.”

The minute I heard those words, my heart sank into my gut.

Two years ago, I committed both the most selfless act and the worst sin that a son ever could. I protected my mother by putting myself in harm’s way, and in the sequence of events that followed, I shot my father. I thought I’d killed him. Later, I was told that the gunshot had struck his shoulder, shattering the bone. It was a hell of an injury, but it wasn’t fatal. At the time, I’d been relieved to find out I wasn’t guilty of murdering my own father, but I still hadn’t been able to go home.

But something in my aunt’s voice tells me that whatever’s happened now, it’s bad. Reallybad.

“What is it? Heart attack? Cancer?”

I hear her voice quiver. “Zach, he’s—he’s dead.”

The word hits me like a blow. I’m supposed to be sad, but I can’t be. The world is a better place without him, but what kind of son doesn’t grieve his father’s death? All I can think about is that at least now, he can never hit my mother again. The gunshot destroyed his use of his right arm, but I’m sure he figured out how to make up for it with the left.

My father was always an industrious kind of guy.

“How?” My voice sounds flat, empty. I know I should force myself to sound like I’m upset, just a little, but I can’t seem to manage it.

There’s a long, drawn-out moment of silence as if my aunt can’t bear to tell me. I feel my stomach knot, and I know that it must be

connected to what I did before she even starts to speak.

“The doctors couldn’t get all of the buckshot out of his shoulder during surgery. They said it wouldn’t cause problems beyond some loss of mobility and pain, but he was going to have that anyway.” My aunt pauses, each word sounding as if it’s being dragged out of her. “But—”

“Just tell me.” I feel sick.

“There was a blood clot. They didn’t see it, and I guess he just lived with it for a while. But it came loose and went to his brain. He died this morning before they could do anything.” My aunt is crying again, and I know it’s not for my father. She hated him as much as I did for the way he treated my mother, her sister. She’s crying for me. Because she knows what this will do to me.

I thought I’d gotten free of it. That I’d gotten lucky. That I hadn’t killed my father. But in a roundabout way, two years later, I did anyway.

He was a bad man, a terrible husband, and a worse father. But he wasmy father. And I’m responsible for his death.

“You can’t blame yourself for this, Zach—”

“Yes, I can,” I say flatly. “If I hadn’t shot him—”

“Then he might have killed your mother. My sister. I’ve never thought you were wrong to do it, Zach.”

“I know. But it doesn’t change what happened.”

“Zach—you should talk to someone. A professional.” My aunt’s voice is steadier now. She’s gone into mothering mode, trying to be there for me. “I’m sure the FBI has therapists who can help—”

Fuck.It hits me then how much deeper this goes. The FBI would be hard-pressed enough to put me on a case when a parent has just died, but knowing the circumstances of his death, I can’t imagine that they’ll allow me to continue.

It’s going to be desk duty for the foreseeable future. Everything that I’d worked so hard for is slipping out of my fingers, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

They don’t waste any time, either. When I step into the office the next morning for what was supposed to be my last de-briefing before taking my flight to New York City, Simpson and Bellona are

both waiting for me. Bellona looks like she might be vaguely sympathetic, but Simpson has a stern expression that tells me none of this is going to go well.

“We heard about your father.” Simpson cuts right to the chase.

“We were sorry to hear about—” Bellona starts to say, but he interrupts her.

“Given the circumstances, I don’t see how we can keep you on this case. Death of a parent is enough to put any agent on desk duty for a while, but once we were made aware of the cause of death—” Simpson shrugs. “You’re gonna sit this out, Rostov.”

My stomach turns over with nausea. I can’t lose this chance. I have so much riding on it—the opportunity to be more than just a dumb kid from bumfuck, Indiana, to make a real difference. To prove that my uncle’s faith in me, recommending me to the academy, wasn’t misplaced. I can’t fail now because of one thing I did two years ago—especially when I can’t ever truly feel that it was wrong. Even if I’ll carry the guilt of it for the rest of my life.

“Listen,” I can hear the urgency in my voice. “This case is what I’ve been waiting for. You said yourself that you thought I had what it takes. That hasn’t changed. If you know the circumstances, then you know there was no love lost between my dad and me. I’m—” I can’t say that I’m not sorry he died. That’s bound to get me a oneway trip to a psychiatrist, maybe even put on suspension until they can be sure I’m not crazy. “I’m okay,” I say finally. “I’m relieved if anything, that my mother is safe now.”

Simpson looks skeptical, but he doesn’t interrupt me. I grab that and run with it.

“What’s left of my family, my aunt and uncle, believed in me when they sent me to the academy. They saw exactly what you did when you assigned me this case. I want the chance to prove that their faith in me, your faith in me, is right. You won’t find anyone more dedicated to bringing Vincent Jamison to justice than I am.”

Simpson looks unimpressed. “Bellona? I want to talk to you outside.”

The two of them step out of the room, leaving me sitting there. Fuck.I might have just made things even worse. Ishouldhavejust

takenthedeskdutyandbeengratefulthatthey’renotreopeningthe case on me. The whole altercation with my father was deemed selfdefense, but I’m pretty sure the FBI can take a second look at whatever they want.

I can see Simpson and Bellona just outside, now talking to the director. My stomach clenches all over again. I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up or shit myself if they don’t come back in here and tell me what’s going to happen, one way or the other, real fucking soon.

When the two of them step back into the room, Simpson doesn’t look pleased. He nods at Bellona, who looks sternly at me.

“The director has agreed to leave you on the case,” she begins, and I feel like all the air has been punched out of me. This wasn’t what I was expecting at all.

“What? Seriously? I—”

“Shut up and listen,” Simpson snaps.

Bellona gives him a look and then turns back to me. “The nature of this case is that you’re going to be managing a lot on your own. Even if the two of us end up in the same location, I can’t check in with you or even act as if I know you. However, we’re assigning a very experienced handler to you, and you cannot miss a meet with him. Not one. You can’t be late. We’re taking a huge chance leaving you on this, Rostov, but the director seems to think that your—what word did he use? Your gumption, and your drive, are reason enough. I think it’s a bad decision, full disclosure. But he calls the shots.”

“I think it’s a stupid decision,” Simpson adds. “But—”

“He calls the shots,” I echo. “Look, I’m really grateful—"

“Can it.” Simpson glares at me. “There’s plenty left to go over and not a lot of time. We’ve been trying to catch this guy for a long time.” He looks as if he’s gone greyer overnight, as if the case is wearing on him. “We think this is going to be it, but it wouldn’t be the first time that he’s slipped through our fingers.” He narrows his eyes at me, Bellona’s stern presence behind him adding weight and making me feel like a small, chastened child. “Don’t make us regret taking a chance on you.”

“I won’t,” I assure him. And I mean it.

RAIN

By the time I make it back up to the penthouse, all I want to do is sink into a hot bubble bath and stay there for the foreseeable future. But the second I walk inside, I see boxes everywhere and a handful of uniformed workers bustling around the house, wrapping and packing items in a flurry of activity.

April walks into the room almost the same time, and I stare at her, slightly stunned. “What’s going on?” I ask, looking around. “Why…?”

“We’re leaving to meet Mr. Jamison at the airport in about ten minutes,” April tells me. I blink, my stomach suddenly tying itself in knots.

“Meet him at the airport? Why?” I ask, confusion evident in my voice.

“I believe Mr. Jamison informed you of the plans for you to move to Manhattan,” April says tonelessly. I can feel my heart sinking, and I look for some sort of emotion in her eyes—sympathy, maybe? But there’s nothing. Just the cool delivery of information.

I knew we were moving, yes. Vincent told me at my parents’ house. But--I didn’t think it would be this soon. I thought I’d have more time to prepare--and why would he have me start working with a trainer here if we were moving the same day?

Because he’s probably paying her to move to New York, too. Or to fly in and out. Or he’ll just get me a new one. Vincent can do

whatever he wants.

It’s all happening so fast that I feel completely thrown off balance. I don’t know what to think, or do, or feel. Even though I’d known since the moment Vincent showed his hand that there was no way a backup plan would work—I’ve tried before, after all—I’d still been desperately trying to think of one all morning. I’d thought of selling a piece of jewelry here and there, ditching April somehow so that I could meet up with Mallory in secret and have her sell some of my designer clothes, anything so that I could put a little bit of money away in secret. So that if my father doesget better, and I can cancel the wedding, I wouldn’t be left with nothing.

But it’s too late for that now. We’re leaving, and I feel cold all over, all my aches and soreness from the workout forgotten. And if I’m being honest with myself, none of my frantic ideas for an escape make any sense. I’ve tried to leave him before, but I’m seeing now that Vincent gets what Vincent wants. I feel stupid now for never listening to my mother, or Mallory, for being so blinded by everything Vincent offered me that I never looked for the catch. I should have known that nothing like this ever comes for free, and I feel like a child who never learned that fairy tales are just that.

I’m still trying to think of a response when the door to the master suite opens, and I see that Andrea, Vincent’s house manager, is here.

I haven’t seen her since the first few weeks that I was dating Vincent, and I’d never really asked why. But there she is, her greystreaked hair piled up neatly on top of her head, dressed in black slacks and a conservative button-down shirt. She looks over at me with a businesslike expression, as if nothing here is out of the ordinary, as if I have no reason to feel as if I’ve just been thrown into a tailspin.

“I’m pleased to be serving you and Mr. Jamison again, Ms. Carlisle,” she says coolly. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

“What?” I ask dumbly, my gaze flicking between her and April.

“Your engagement,” she says patiently but with a slight edge to her tone. “Mr. Jamison tells me that you are soon to be Mrs. Jamison.”

I look down at my massive engagement ring. “Oh…yes. Yes, I’m really happy,” I say, trying to inject genuine emotion into the words, but it’s hard to muster.

I feel sick. Andrea was never rude to me, just cold before, and I’d figured it was because she assumed I was another girl passing through. But she doesn’t seem any more pleased to see me now. She’s almost disdainful as she looks me up and down, taking in my flushed, messy appearance.

“I really need to shower,” I say weakly. “I just got back from the gym.”

“Of course, go ahead—” April starts to say, and Andrea cuts her off.

“Quickly, though, Ms. Carlisle,” she says sharply. “I’ll continue packing the things that Mr. Jamison requested that you bring to the new apartment while you do so.”

“What?” I blink at her. “No, I can pack my own things. It’s fine. I’m perfectly capable of doing this myself.”

“I’ve been instructed to help you, per Mr. Jamison himself,” Andrea says firmly, cutting me off. “No argument, Ms. Carlisle, please. We’re in a hurry. Just get yourself cleaned up.” She says the last with distaste, and I flush hotly, my cheeks turning red.

It doesn’t seem like I can do anything right these days.

My heart sinks as I push past her, hurrying towards the bathroom before I start to cry again. It’s clear to me now what’s going on. It won’t be just April to babysit me anymore; now it’ll be Andrea, too. And I have a sinking feeling that Andrea isn’t going to be quietly sympathetic the way April sometimes is or fade into the background like she does. No, she’ll be front and center, doing Vincent’s bidding, handlingme, and making sure that I toe the line at all times and do exactly what he wants. I have no doubt that her eyes will be on me regularly and that she’ll report any infractions immediately.

Tears start to slide down my cheeks as I turn on the shower, stripping out of my workout clothes. I can hear her in the bedroom already, pulling things out of drawers.

I knew my life was going to change last night, but I had no idea that it would be to this degree. And I have a sinking feeling that it’s

going to get worse before it gets better.

THE RIDE OUT to the tarmac is silent. I sit on one side of the black town car, April and Andrea on the other. I glance at their faces as I smooth my hands nervously over my thighs. I’m wearing a pair of dark skinny jeans that are one of Vincent’s favorites and a silky cream-colored top with diamond studs in my ears and a diamond tennis bracelet on my wrist—all things that Andrea laid out for me and said that Vincent had picked for me to wear.

I remember, in the early days of my relationship with Vincent, when all of the clothes and jewelry he’d send for me seemed like a theme, like he was dressing me up like a doll—this time a Barbie for a nightclub opening, another time a pinup for going out to a speakeasy and a jazz bar. Then it seemed eccentric but fun, a sort of inside joke.

It doesn’t feel fun anymore.

April’s face is coolly neutral as always. I don’t know what’s going on in her head right now—if she approves, disapproves, or just doesn’t care. On the other hand, Andrea has that slightly pursed look around her lips, as if she’s tasted something bad, and she gives me one quick look before primly looking out of the window, dismissing me.

I don’t speak for the entirety of the drive, and neither do they. There’s a faint drizzle of rain starting to fall as the town car pulls up to the hangar, and I think morosely that it’s entirely appropriate for today—the weather matches how I feel.

Vincent is waiting by the jet, dressed impeccably in a bespoke black suit that fits him without a line or crease to be seen, his hair styled perfectly, his face set in a stern, handsome lines. I slide out of the car nervously as the driver opens the door, followed by April and Andrea, and I can feel my stomach fluttering as I walk towards him. This is the first time I’ve seen him since last night, since everything changed. I don’t know what to expect.

The moment I’m within reaching distance, he pulls me to him, wrapping his arms around me as his fingers slide under my chin, tilting my face up for him to kiss me. The kiss is deep and passionate, embarrassing in front of April and Andrea but dizzying at the same time. For a brief second, it’s hard not to forget everything that happened over the last weeks, to not believe once again that this is the man I fell in love with, that everything else has just been some misunderstanding. The man I fell in love with wouldn’t have told me just last night that I wasn’t going to be the only woman he slept with. Still, I can’t stop myself from returning the kiss, if only because I want the old Vincent back so badly. I want the desire and love and security, the idea of it at least, the lingering memory of what we once had, and I wrap my arms around his neck, kissing him back with equal passion.

At that moment, even I don’t know if I really mean it or if I’m pretending.

When we separate, I see that April and Andrea have already disappeared onto the jet. Vincent and I walk up the steps together, my fingers linked through his, and I wonder if he’s gripping my hand more tightly than usual, or if I’m just imagining it. The moment we’re on board and reach our seats, he pulls me into his lap as he sits down, his arms encircling my waist tightly.

“Are you excited for our fresh start, Poppy?” he asks, smoothing one hand over my blonde hair. I left it long and loose, blow-dried straight the way he likes, and I can’t help but lean into his touch. I miss him touching me like this, gently, affectionately. I miss everything about what we used to be, what I might never have with him again.

“I am,” I tell him, and it’s not a total lie—I am excited to go back to Manhattan. I loved it there when we visited, but the anxious pit in my stomach reminds me that we’re going farther away from my friends and family—what’s left of them anyway—and my roots. “I just wish you would have told me,” I say hesitantly, not wanting to upset him.

“I did tell you, Poppy,” he says, almost placatingly. “Don’t you remember?”

“Well, yes--” I lick my lips nervously, trying to think of how to phrase it carefully. “I just didn’t expect it to be literally the next morning, that’s all.”

His face hardens immediately, and I feel my stomach flip over. His jaw tightens with irritation, his eyes narrowing. “Well, what else do I need to run by you, Poppy? Please, let me know, so I don’t fuck up again.” Everything about his tone is irritated and sarcastic, and I fight to keep anxious tears from springing to my eyes.

How did I end up here, about to marrythis man?

“I didn’t say you fucked up,” I whisper. “It was just a surprise. I was just caught off guard. I’m sorry.” I hate my voice, how I sound, wheedling and begging for him not to be angry. I hate that I’m afraid of him. But every conversation feels like a ticking time bomb now, just waiting to explode with one wrong word.

“Don’t you trust me, Poppy?” he asks, smoothing his hand over my hair again. His voice has switched back to tender, almost soothing, and I bite my lip to keep it from trembling. “Don’t you trust me to do what’s best for us?”

I nod, swallowing hard. “Of course I do, Vincent,” I whisper. “I really do.” I’mlying.IjustliedtothemanI’msupposedtobeinlove with, my future husband. But what else can I do? If he’s so angry that I questioned our sudden move, what would he say or do if I admitted that I don’ttrust him anymore? That everything he said to me last night shattered the last bit of trust I had in him?

His hand moves from my hair to my face, his fingers sliding over my cheek, and then he grips my chin tightly, tilting my face up so that my eyes meet his. His grip on me has turned from gentle to painful, and I whimper without meaning to as his cold green gaze latches on to mine.

“That hurts, babe,” I manage, my pulse suddenly beating hard in my throat. “Vincent--”

He drags my mouth to his and kisses me hard, the way he did outside of the plane, but there’s no passion in it this time, no love. It’s not a lover’s kiss. It’s a reminder that he owns me now, that I’m his, and that I need to remember my place. He doesn’t have to say it out loud for me to understand.

“Go,” he says, releasing my face and waving towards the back of the plane where April and Andrea are sitting. “Go sit with them. I’ve got work to do, and I can’t be distracted.”

I try to ignore the hurt that wells up within me. I feel like a dog, dismissed and slinking away with my tail between my legs. I wonder how much of all that April or Andrea, or both of them, saw. I can’t meet their eyes as I sit down opposite them, looking out of the window at the passing clouds and trying to ignore the knots in my stomach, the sinking feeling in my chest.

How did this happen? No matter how I try, I can’t untangle the series of events that led me here or pinpoint exactly when things spiraled so out of control. All I know is that I don’t have any way out now, and the situation is far beyond anything I can do.

VINCENT DOESN’T SAY another word to me for the rest of the flight or the drive into Manhattan from the airport once we land. He holds my hand tightly in the back of the town car, though, as if to remind me of our little conversation on the plane. I don’t look at either April or Andrea because I’m too embarrassed to meet anyone's eyes. I couldn’t even face myself in the mirror at this point.

When we arrive at our new home, I’m greeted by the most gorgeous brownstone that I’ve ever seen, situated on a tree-lined, perfectly kept street on the Upper West Side. Vincent goes up the stairs first with me just behind, and when we step inside, I stifle a gasp. It’s already decorated and furnished, meticulously prepared for our arrival. I follow Vincent through the house as he shows me around, wide-eyed despite myself.

The penthouse in Chicago is beautiful and modern, but this has an old-world, luxurious feel to it. There’s exposed brick everywhere, the living room filled with gleaming hardwood and thick Persian rugs, with velvet curtains at the windows and overstuffed, plush furniture everywhere in front of a massive brick fireplace. The house is three stories with a rooftop deck, with a kitchen full of gleaming

brass hardware and new appliances, and a long mahogany table for dinner parties in the adjoining dining room. The bedrooms are all perfectly made up, not a speck of dust anywhere. Our master suite has a fireplace in the bedroom in front of the king-sized, four-poster bed, plus a massive soaking tub in the bathroom.

Vincent takes me all the way up to the deck. It’s flourishing with potted plants and flowers, a firepit, and elegant lounge furniture, as well as a wet bar along one side. He takes one look at my face as I take it all in and beams at me.

“Well, do you like it?” he asks.

I might have had to lie to him on the plane, but as much as I want to hate it after everything he’s done to me in the last twentyfour hours, I don’t have to lie about this. “Of course I do!”

He smiles at me. “You can show me how grateful you are later,” he says with a wink, and I feel my stomach knot again. “Go ahead and get settled in. Andrea is familiar with the house, she can help you. I have more work to do. I’ll be back later.”

I nod without speaking, my mind still tied up with thoughts of what he’ll want from me later and if I’m a good enough actress to give it to him. A beautiful brownstone isn’t enough to turn me on. I can’t think of sex with him without thinking of all the other women that have been in and out of his bed, while I was stupid enough to believe that he was being faithful to me. I don’t know how I’m going to pretend to just forget about that, to act as if I want him when I know I’m not the only one anymore.

I start to walk back down the stairwell that leads into the house when Vincent’s voice sternly booms from behind me. “Don’t forget about the diet that you were given earlier, Poppy,” he reminds me. “I expect you to stick to it here and your training schedule. Andrea knows the address of the gym where your trainer will meet you. She’s based in New York; I flew her into Chicago this morning especially to meet with you.”

It should sound like an extravagance, like the generosity of a loving fiancé who only wants to give me the best, but with my rosecolored glasses gone, I can see it for what it is. Even though he knew we’d be in Manhattan in less than a day, he couldn’t wait for

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wall which we cannot scale if we would. Its very height is tempting, but there is no rose-garden beyond it—only a bleak plain with the sea of time gnawing its dreary shores.

To be old and to know ten thousand things—there is something august and majestic in the thought; but to be young and ignorant, to see yesterday pass, a shining ripple on the flood of oblivion, and then to buckle down to the day’s business,—there’s a better thing than being old and wise! We are forever praising the unconscious ease of great literature; and that ease—typical of the life and time reflected—was a thing of the day, with no yesterdays’ dead weight dragging it down. Whitman’s charm for those of us who like him lies in the fact that he doesn’t invite us to a rummage sale of cast-off raiment, but offers fabrics that are fresh and in new patterns. We have all known that same impatience of the past that he voices so stridently. The world is as new to him as it was to Isaiah or Homer.

“When I heard the learned astronomer, When the proofs and figures were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, How soon, unaccountably, I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

The old doctor can name all the stars without a telescope, but he does not know that in joy they “perform their shining.” The real note in life is experiment and quest, and we are detached far more than we realize from what was and concerned with what is and may be.

There is a delightful comedy,—long popular in England and known in America, in which a Martian appears on earth to teach Dickens-like lessons of unselfishness to men. Since witnessing it, I have often indulged in speculations as to the sensations of a pilgrim who might wing his way from another star to this earth, losing in the transition all knowledge of his own past—and come freshly upon our world and

its achievements, beholding man at his best and worst without any knowledge whatever of our history or of the evolution through which we have become what we are. There you would have a critic who could view our world with fresh eyes. What we were yesterday would mean nothing to him, and what we are to-day he might judge honestly from a standpoint of utility or beauty. Not what was old or new, but what was good, would interest him—not whether our morals are better than those of our ancestors, but whether they are of any use at all. The croaking plaint of Not-What-It-Used-To-Be, the sanguine It-Will-Come-In-Time, would have no meaning for such a judge.

“And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.”

The conjunction of these last words is happy. Verily in experience lies our hope. In learning what to do and what not to do, in stumbling, falling to rise again and faring ever upward and onward. Yes, in and through experience lies our hope, but not, O brother, a wisdom gained vicariously,—not yours for me nor mine for you,—nor from enduring books, charm they never so wisely,—but every one of us, old and young, for himself.

Literature is rich in advice that is utterly worthless. Life’s “Book of Don’ts” is only read for the footnotes that explain why particular “don’ts” failed,—it has become in reality the “Book of Don’ts that Did.” It is pleasant to remember that the gentle Autocrat, a man of science as well as of letters, did not allow professional courtesy to stand in the way of a characteristic fling at Doctor Experience. He goes, in his contempt, to the stupid creatures of the barnyard, and points in high disdain to “that solemn fowl, Experience, who, according to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs.”

If the old doctor were to be taken at his own valuation and we should be disposed to profit by his teachings, our lives would be a dreary round; and youth, particularly, would find the ginger savorless in the jar and the ale stale in the pot. I saw my venerable friend walking

abroad the other day in the flowered dressing-gown which he so much affects, wearing his familiar classroom smile. I heard him warning a boy, who was hammering a boat together out of wretchedly flimsy material, that his argosy would never float; but the next day I saw the young Columbus faring forth, with his coat for sail, and saw him turn the bend in the creek safely and steer beyond “the gray Azores” of his dreams.

The young admiral cannot escape the perils of the deep, and like St. Paul he will know shipwreck before his marine career is ended; but why discourage him? Not the doctor’s hapless adventures, but the lad’s own are going to make a man of him. I know a town where, thirty years ago, an afternoon newspaper failed about once every six months. There was, so the wiseacres affirmed, no manner of use in trying it again. But a tow-headed boy put his small patrimony into a venture, reinforced it with vigorous independence and integrity, and made it a source of profit to himself and a valued agent in the community. In twenty years the property sold for a million dollars. Greatness, I assure Septimus, consists in achieving the impossible.

“Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleachèd garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.”

The season is at hand when Time throws his annual challenge in our teeth. The bell tinkles peremptorily and a calendar is thrust upon us. November is still young when we are dragged upon the threshold of another year. The leisurely dismissal of the old year is no longer possible; we may indulge in no lingering good-bye, but the old fellow hustles out in haste, with apologetic, shrinking step and we slam the door upon him. It is off with the old love and on with the new,

whether we will or no. I solemnly protest against the invasion of the calendar. In an age that boasts of freedom, I rebel against a tyrant who comes merely to warn us of the fugitive character of Time; for that sharp elbow in the ribs has prodded many a noble soul to his death. These pretty devices that we are asked to hang upon our walls are the seductive advertisements of an insinuating and implacable foe. We are asked to be particeps criminis in his hideous trade, for must I not tear off and cast as rubbish to the void a day, a week, a month, that I may not have done with at all? Why, may I ask, should I throw my yesterdays into the waste-basket? Yet if I fail, falling only a few leaves behind, is not my shameless inefficiency and heedlessness paraded before the world? How often have I delivered myself up to my enemies by suffering April to laugh her girlish laughter through torrid July? I know well the insinuating smile of the friend who, dropping in on a peaceful morning, when Time, as far as I am concerned, has paused in the hay-field to dream upon his scythe handle, walks coolly to the calendar and brings me up to date with a fine air of rebuke, as though he were conferring the greatest favor in the world. I am sure that I should have no standing with my neighbors if they knew that I rarely wind my watch and that the clocks in my house, save one or two that are kept going merely to avoid explanations, are never wound.

There is a gentle irony in the fact that the most insolent dispensers of calendars are the life insurance companies. It is a legitimate part of their nefarious game: you and I are their natural prey, and if they can accent for us the mortality of the flesh by holding up before us, in compact form, the slight round of the year, they are doing much to impress upon us the appalling brevity of our most reasonable expectancy. How weak we are to suffer the intimidation of these soulless corporations, who thrust their wares upon us as much as to say, “Here’s a new year, and you’d better make the most of it, for there’s no saying when you will get another.” You, my friend, with your combined calendar and memorandum always before you, may pledge all your to-morrows if you will; but as for me the Hypocritic Days, the Barefoot Dervishes, may ring my bell until they exhaust the battery without gaining a single hour as my grudging alms.

We are all prone to be cowards, and to bend before the tyrant whose banner is spread victoriously on all our walls. Poets and philosophers aid and abet him; the preachers are forever telling us what a dreadful fellow he is, and warning us that if we don’t get on the good side of him we are lost forever,—mere wreckage on a grim, inhospitable shore. Hypocrisy and false oaths are born of such teaching. Januarius, let us remember, was two-faced, and it has come about naturally that New Year’s oaths carry a reserve. They are not, in fact, serious obligations. It is a poor soul that sets apart a certain number of days for rectitude, and I can’t for the life of me see anything noble in making a constable of the calendar. I find with joy that I am freeing myself of the tyrant’s thrall. I am never quite sure of the day of the week; I date my letters yesterday or to-morrow with equal indifference. June usually thrusts her roses into my windows before I change the year in dating my letters. The magazines seem leagued with the calendar for man’s undoing. I sometimes rush home from an inspection of a magazine counter in mad haste to get where Oblivion cannot stretch forth a long, lean arm and pluck me into the eternal shades; for I decline with all the strength of my crude Western nature, to countenance the manufacture of yesterdays, no matter how cheerful they may be, out of my confident to-morrows. A March magazine flung into the teeth of a February blizzard does not fool the daffodils a particle. This stamping of months that have not arrived upon our current literature is nothing more or less than counterfeiting;—or rather, the issuing of false currency by the old Tyrant who stands behind the counter of the Bank of Time. And there is the railway time-table,—the unconscious comic utterance of the Zeitgeist! If the 12.59 is one minute or one hour late, who cares, I wonder? Who am I, pray, that I should stuff my pocket with calendars and time-tables? Why not throw the charts to the fishes and let the winds have their will with us awhile! Let us, I beg, leave some little margin in our lives for the shock of surprise!

The Daughters of Time are charming young persons, and they may offer me all the bread, kingdoms, stars they like; but they must cheer up or keep out of my front yard! No shuffling around, like Barefoot Dervishes; but in golden sandals let them come, and I will kindle a fire of next year’s calendars in their honor. When the snows weigh

heavily upon the hills, let us not mourn for yesterday or waste time in idle speculations at the fireside, but address ourselves manfully to the hour’s business. And as some of the phrases of Horace’s ode to Thaliarchus rap for attention in an old file box at the back of my head, I set down a pleasant rendering of them by Mr. Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr.

“To-morrow? Shall the fleeting years

Abide our questioning? They go

All heedless of our hopes and fears.

To-morrow? ’Tis not ours to know

That we again shall see the flowers.

To-morrow is the gods’, but oh,

To-day is ours.”

We all salute heartily and sincerely the “grandeur and exquisiteness” of old age. It is not because Doctor Experience is old that we distrust his judgment; it is not his judgment that we distrust half so much as his facts. They are good, as facts go, but we are all foreordained and predestined to reap our own crop. He need not take the trouble to nail his sign, “No thoroughfare,” on the highways that have perplexed him, for we, too, must stray into the brambles and stumble at the ford. It is decreed that we sail without those old charts of his, and we drop our signal-books and barometer overboard without a qualm. The reefs change with every tide, adding zest to our adventure; and while the gulfs may wash us down, there’s always the chance that, in our own way and after much anxious and stupid sailing, we may ground our barnacled hulks on the golden sands of the Happy Isles. Our blood cries for the open sea or the long white road, and

“Rare the moment and exceeding fleet

When the spring sunlight, tremulous and thin, Makes glad the pulses with tumultuous beat

For meadows never won nor wandered in.”

Should Smith go to Church?

I THINK he should. Moreover, I think I should set Smith an example by placing myself on Sunday morning in a pew from which he may observe me at my devotions. Smith and I attended the same Sunday school when we were boys, and remained for church afterwards as a matter of course. Smith now spends his Sunday mornings golfing, or pottering about his garden, or in his club or office, and after the midday meal he takes a nap and loads his family into a motor for a flight countryward. It must be understood that I do not offer myself as a pattern for Smith. While I resent being classified with the lost sheep, I am, nevertheless, a restless member of the flock, prone to leap the wall and wander. Smith is the best of fellows,—an average twentieth-century American, diligent in business, a kind husband and father, and in politics anxious to vote for what he believes to be the best interests of the country.

In the community where we were reared it was not respectable not to go to church. I remember distinctly that in my boyhood people who were not affiliated with some church were looked upon as lawless pariahs. An infidel was a marked man: one used to be visible in the streets I frequented, and I never passed him without a thrill of horror. Our city was long known as “a poor theatre town,” where only Booth in Hamlet and Jefferson in Rip might be patronized by church-going people who valued their reputations. Yet in the same community no reproach attaches to-day to the non-church-going citizen. A majority of the men I know best, in cities large and small, do not go to church. Most of them are in nowise antagonistic to religion; they are merely indifferent. Clearly, there must be some reason for this change. It is inconceivable that men would lightly put from them the faith of their fathers through which they are promised redemption from sin and everlasting life.

Now and then I hear it asserted that the church is not losing its hold upon the people. Many clergymen and laymen resent the oftrepeated statement that we Americans are not as deeply swayed by religion as in other times; but this seems to me a case of whistling through a graveyard on a dark night.

A recent essayist,[1] writing defensively of the church, cries, in effect, that it is moving toward the light; don’t shoot! He declares that no one who has not contributed something toward the solution of the church’s problem has earned the right to criticize. I am unable to sympathize with this reasoning. The church is either the repository of the Christian religion on earth, the divinely inspired and blessed tabernacle of the faith of Christ, or it is a stupendous fraud. There is no sound reason why the church should not be required to give an account of its stewardship. If it no longer attracts men and women in our strenuous and impatient America, then it is manifestly unjust to deny to outsiders the right of criticism. Smith is far from being a fool, and if by his test of “What’s in it for me?” he finds the church wanting, it is, as he would say, “up to the church” to expend some of its energy in proving that there is a good deal in it for him. It is unfair to say to Smith, who has utterly lost touch with the church, that before he is qualified to criticize the ways and the manners of churches he must renew an allegiance which he was far too intelligent and conscientious to sever without cause.

Nor can I justly be denied the right of criticism because my own ardor is diminished, and I am frequently conscious of a distinct lukewarmness. I confess to a persistent need in my own life for the support, the stimulus, the hope, that is inherent in the teachings of Christianity; nevertheless the church—that is to say, the Protestantism with which I am familiar—has seemed to me increasingly a wholly inadequate medium for communicating to men such as Smith and myself the help and inspiration of the vision of Christ. There are far too many Smiths who do not care particularly whether the churches prosper or die. And I urge that Smith is worthy of the church’s best consideration. Even if the ninety-and-nine were snugly housed in the fold, Smith’s soul is still worth the saving.

“I don’t want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that.”

Yet Smith doesn’t care a farthing about the state of his soul. Nothing, in fact, interests him less. Smith’s wife had been “brought up in the church,” but after her marriage she displayed Smith to the eyes of the congregation for a few Easter Sundays and then gave him up.

However, their children attend Sunday school of a denomination other than that in which the Smiths were reared, and Smith gives money to several churches; he declares that he believes churches are a good thing, and he will do almost anything for a church but attend its services. What he really means to say is that he thinks the church is a good thing for Jones and me, but that, as for himself, he gets on comfortably without it.

And the great danger both to the church and to Smith lies in the fact that he does apparently get on so comfortably without it!

IMy personal experiences of religion and of churches have been rather varied, and while they present nothing unusual, I shall refer to them as my justification for venturing to speak to my text at all. I was baptized in the Episcopal Church in infancy, but in about my tenth year I began to gain some knowledge of other Protestant churches. One of my grandfathers had been in turn Methodist and Presbyterian, and I “joined” the latter church in my youth. Becoming later a communicant of the Episcopal Church, I was at intervals a vestryman and a delegate to councils, and for twenty years attended services with a regularity that strikes me as rather admirable in the retrospect.

As a boy I was taken to many “revivals” under a variety of denominational auspices, and later, as a newspaper reporter, I was frequently assigned to conferences and evangelistic meetings. I made my first “hit” as a reporter by my vivacious accounts of the performances of a “trance” revivalist, who operated in a skating-rink in my town. There was something indescribably “woozy” in those cataleptic manifestations in the bare, ill-lighted hall. I even recall vividly the bump of the mourners’ heads as they struck the floor, while the evangelist moved among the benches haranguing the crowd. Somewhat earlier I used to delight in the calisthenic performances of a “boy preacher” who ranged my part of the world. His physical activities were as astonishing as his volubility. At the high moment of his discourse he would take a flying leap from the

platform to the covered marble baptismal font. He wore pumps for greater ease in these flights, and would run the length of the church with astonishing nimbleness, across the backs of the seats over the heads of the kneeling congregation. I often listened with delicious horripilations to the most startling of this evangelist’s perorations, in which he described the coming of the Pale Rider. It was a shuddersome thing. The horror of it, and the wailing and crying it evoked, come back to me after thirty years.

The visit of an evangelist used to be an important event in my town; converts were objects of awed attention, particularly in the case of notorious hardened sinners whose repentance awakened the greatest public interest and sympathy. Now that we have passed the quarter-million mark, revivals cause less stir, for evangelists of the more militant, spectacular type seem to avoid the larger cities. Those who have never observed the effect of a religious revival upon a community not too large or too callous to be shaken by it have no idea of the power exerted by the popular evangelist. It is commonly said that these visits only temporarily arrest the march of sin; that after a brief experience of godly life the converts quickly relapse; but I believe that these strident trumpetings of the ram’s horn are not without their salutary effect. The saloons, for a time at least, find fewer customers; the forces of decency are strengthened, and the churches usually gain in membership. Most of us prefer our religion without taint of melodrama, but it is far from my purpose to asperse any method or agency that may win men to better ways of life.

At one time and another I seem to have read a good deal on various aspects of religion. Newman and the Tractarians interested me immensely I purchased all of Newman’s writings, and made a collection of his photographs, several of which gaze at me, a little mournfully and rebukingly, as I write; for presently I took a cold plunge into Matthew Arnold, and Rome ceased to call me. Arnold’s writings on religious subjects have been obscured by the growing reputation of his poetry; but it was only yesterday that “Literature and Dogma” and “God and the Bible” enjoyed great vogue. He translated continental criticism into terms that made it accessible to laymen,

and encouraged liberal thought. He undoubtedly helped many to a new orientation in matters of faith.

My reading in church history, dogma, and criticism has been about that of the average layman. I have enjoyed following the experiments of the psychical researchers, and have been a diligent student of the proceedings of heresy trials. The Andover case and the Briggs controversy once seemed important, and they doubtless were, but they established nothing of value. The churches are warier of heresy trials than they were; and in this connection I hold that a clergyman who entertains an honest doubt as to the virgin birth or the resurrection may still be a faithful servant of Jesus Christ. To unfrock him merely arouses controversy, and draws attention to questions that can never be absolutely determined by any additional evidence likely to be adduced. The continuance in the ministry of a doubter on such points becomes a question of taste which I admit to be debatable; but where, as has happened once in late years, the culprit was an earnest and sincere doer of Christianity’s appointed tasks, his conviction served no purpose beyond arousing a species of cynical enjoyment in the bosom of Smith, and of smug satisfaction in those who righteously flung a well-meaning man to the lions.

Far more serious are the difficulties of those ministers of every shade of faith who find themselves curbed and more or less openly threatened for courageously attacking evils they find at their own doors by those responsible for the conditions they assail. Only recently two or three cases have come to my attention of clergymen who had awakened hostility in their congregations by their zeal in social service. The loyal support of such men by their fellows seems to me far nobler than the pursuit of heretics. The Smiths of our country have learned to admire courage in their politics, and there is no reason for believing that they will not rally to a religion that practices it undauntedly. Christ, of all things, was no coward.

There is, I believe, nowhere manifest at this time, within the larger Protestant bodies at least, any disposition to defend the inerrancy of the Bible, and this is fortunate in that it leaves the churches free to deal with more vital matters. It seems fair to assume that criticism has spent its force, and done its worst. The spirit of the Bible has not

been harmed by it. The reliance of the Hebrews on the beneficence of Jehovah, the testimony of Jesus to the enduring worth of charity, mercy, and love, have in nowise been injured by textual criticism. The Old Testament, fancifully imagined as the Word of God given by dictation to specially chosen amanuenses, appeals to me no more strongly than a Bible recognized as the vision of brooding spirits, who, in a time when the world was young, and earth was nearer heaven than now, were conscious of longings and dreams that were wonderfully realized in their own hearts and lives. And the essentials of Christ’s teachings have lost nothing by criticism.

The Smiths who have drifted away from the churches will hardly be brought back to the pews by even the most scholarly discussion of doubtful texts. Smith is not interested in the authenticity of lines or chapters, nor do nice points of dogma touch the affairs of his life or the needs of his soul. The fact that certain gentlemen in session at Nicæa in .. 325 issued a statement of faith for his guidance strikes him as negligible; it does not square with any need of which he is conscious in his own breast.

A church that would regain the lost Smiths will do well to satisfy that large company of the estranged and the indifferent that one need not believe all that is contained between the lids of the Bible to be a Christian. Much of the Bible is vulnerable, but Jesus explained himself in terms whose clarity has in nowise been clouded by criticism. Smith has no time, even if he had the scholarship, to pass upon the merits of the Book of Daniel; but give him Christ’s own words without elucidation and he is at once on secure ground. There only lately came into my hands a New Testament in which every utterance of Jesus is given the emphasis of black-face type, with the effect of throwing his sayings into high relief; and no one reading his precepts thus presented can fail to be impressed by the exactness with which He formulated his “secret” into a working platform for the guidance of men. Verily there could be no greater testimony to the divine authority of the Carpenter of Nazareth than the persistence with which his ideal flowers upon the ever-mounting mass of literature produced to explain Him.

II

Smith will not be won back to the church through appeals to theology, or stubborn reaffirmations of creeds and dogmas. I believe it may safely be said that the great body of ministers individually recognize this. A few cling to a superstition that there is inherent in religion itself a power which by some sort of magic, independently of man, will make the faith of Christ triumphant in the world. I do not believe so; Smith could not be made to think so. And Smith’s trouble is, if I understand him, not with faith after all, but with works. The church does not impress him as being an efficient machine that yields adequate returns upon the investment. If Smith can be brought to works through faith, well enough; but he is far more critical of works than of faith. Works are within the range of his experience; he admires achievement: show him a foundation of works and interest him in strengthening that foundation and in building upon it, and his faith will take care of itself.

The word we encounter oftenest in the business world nowadays is “efficiency”; the thing of which Smith must first be convinced is that the church may be made efficient. And on that ground he must be met honestly, for Smith is a practical being, who surveys religion, as everything else, with an eye of calculation. At a time when the ethical spirit in America is more healthy and vigorous than ever before, Smith does not connect the movements of which he is aware in business and politics with religion. Religion seems to him to be a poor starved side issue, not a source and guiding spirit in the phenomena he observes and respects.

The economic waste represented in church investment and administration does not impress Smith favorably, nor does it awaken admiration in Jones or in me. Smith knows that two groceries on opposite sides of the street are usually one too many. We used to be told that denominational rivalry aroused zeal, but this cannot longer be more than an absurd pretense. This idea that competition is essential to the successful extension of Christianity continues to bring into being many crippled and dying churches, as Smith well knows. And he has witnessed, too, a deterioration of the church’s

power through its abandonment of philanthropic work to secular agencies, while churches of the familiar type, locked up tight all the week save for a prayer-meeting and choir-practice, have nothing to do. What strikes Smith is their utter wastefulness and futility.

The lack of harmony in individual churches—and there is a good deal of it—is not reassuring to the outsider. The cynical attitude of a good many non-church-going Smiths is due to the strifes, often contemptibly petty, prevailing within church walls. It seems difficult for Christians to dwell together in peace and concord. In almost every congregation there appears to be a party favorable to the minister and one antagonistic to him. A minister who seemed to me to fill more fully the Christian ideal than any man I have known was harassed in the most brutal fashion by a congregation incapable of appreciating the fidelity and self-sacrifice that marked his ministry. I recall with delight the fighting qualities of another clergyman who was an exceptionally brilliant pulpit orator. He was a Methodist who had fallen to the lot of a church that had not lately been distinguished for able preaching. This man filled his church twice every Sunday, and it was the one sought oftenest by strangers within the city’s gates; yet about half his own membership hated him cordially. Though I was never of his flock, I enjoyed his sermons; and knowing something of his relations with the opposition party in his congregation, I recall with keenest pleasure how he fought back. Now and then an arrow grazed his ear; but he was unheedful of warnings that he would be pilloried for heresy. He landed finally in his old age in an obscure church, where he died, still fighting with his back to the wall. Though the shepherd’s crook as a weapon is going out of style, I have an idea that clergymen who stand sturdily for their own ideals receive far kindlier consideration than those who meekly bow to vestries, trustees, deacons, elders, and bishops.

Music has long been notoriously a provoker of discord. Once in my news-hunting days I suffered the ignominy of a “scoop” on a choirrumpus, and I thereupon formed the habit of lending an anxious ear to rumors of trouble in choir-lofts. The average ladder-like Te Deum, built up for the display of the soprano’s vocal prowess, has always struck me as an unholy thing. I even believe that the horrors of highly

embellished offertories have done much to tighten purse-strings and deaden generous impulses. The presence behind the pulpit of a languid quartette praising God on behalf of the bored sinners in the pews has always seemed to me the profanest of anomalies. Nor has long contemplation of vested choirs in Episcopal churches shaken my belief that church music should be an affair of the congregation. There seems to exist inevitably, even in the smallest congregation, “a certain rich man” whose opinions must be respected by the pulpit. The minister of a large congregation confessed to me despairingly, not long ago, that the courage had been taken out of him by the protests evoked whenever he touched even remotely upon social topics like child labor, or shorter hours for workingmen. There were manufacturers in that church who would not “stand for it.” Ministers are warned that they must attend to their own business, which is preaching the Word of God not so concretely or practically as to offend the “pillars.”

Just what is it, I wonder, that a minister may preach without hazarding his job? It is said persistently that the trouble with the church at the present day is that the ministers no longer preach the Word of God; that if Christian Truth were again taught with the old vigor, people would hear it gladly. This is, I believe, an enormous fallacy. I know churches where strict orthodoxy has been preached uninterruptedly for years, and which have steadily declined in spite of it—or because of it. Not long ago, in a great assembly of one of the strongest denominations, when that cry for a return to the “Old Bible Truth” was raised, one minister rose and attacked the plea, declaring that he had never faltered in his devotion to ancient dogma, and yet his church was dying. And even so, many churches whose walls echo uninterruptedly an absolutely impeccable orthodoxy are failing. We shall not easily persuade Smith to forego the golf-links on Sunday morning to hear the “Old Gospel Truth” preached in outworn, meaningless phrases. Those old coins have the gold in them, but they must be recast in new moulds if they are again to pass current.

The difficulties of the clergy are greatly multiplied in these days. The pulpit has lost its old authority. It no longer necessarily follows that the ministers are the men of greatest cultivation in their community. The Monday morning newspapers formerly printed, in my town, pretty full excerpts of sermons. I recall the case of one popular minister whose sermons continued to be printed long after he had removed to another city. Nowadays nothing from the pulpit that is not sensational is considered worth printing. And the parson has lost his social importance, moving back slowly toward his old place below the salt. He used to be “asked,” even if he was not sincerely “expected” at the functions given by his parishioners; but this has changed now that fewer families have any parson to invite.

A minister’s is indubitably the hardest imaginable lot. Every one criticizes him. He is abused for illiberality, or, seeking to be all things to all men, he is abused for consorting with sinners. His door-bell tinkles hourly, and he must answer the behest of people he does not know, to marry or bury people he never heard of. He is expected to preach eloquently, to augment his flock, to keep a hand on the Sunday school, to sit on platforms in the interest of all good causes, and to bear himself with discretion amid the tortuous mazes of church and secular politics. There seem to be, in churches of all kinds, ambitious pontiffs—lay popes—possessed of an ambition to hold both their fellow laymen and their meek, long-suffering minister in subjection. Why anyone should wish to be a church boss I do not know; and yet the supremacy is sometimes won after a struggle that has afforded the keenest delight to the cynical Smiths on the outside. One must view these internecine wars more in sorrow than in anger. They certainly contribute not a little to popular distrust of the church as a conservator of love and peace.

There are men in the ministry who can have had no clear vocation to the clerical life; but there are misfits and failures in all professions. Some of these, through bigotry or stupidity, do much to justify Smith’s favorite dictum that there is as much Christianity outside the church as within it. Now and then I find a Smith whose distrust of religion is based upon some disagreeable adventure with a clergyman, and I can’t deny that my own experiences with the cloth

have been, on one or two occasions, disturbing. As to the more serious of these I may not speak, but I shall mention two incidents, for the reason that they are such trifles as affect Smith with joy. Once in a parish-meeting I saw a bishop grossly humiliated for having undertaken to rebuke a young minister for wearing a chasuble, or not wearing it, or for removing it in the pulpit, or the other way round,—at any rate, it was some such momentous point in ecclesiastical millinery that had loosened a frightful fury of recrimination. The very sight or suggestion of chasubles has ever since awakened in me the most unchristian resentment. While we fought over the chasuble I suppose people actually died within bow-shot of the church without knowing that “if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.”

And speaking of bishops, I venture the interpolation that that office, believed by many to be the softest berth in Zion as it exists in the Episcopal Church, is in fact the most vexatious and thankless to which any man can aspire; nor have I in mind the laborious lives of adventurous spirits like Whipple, Hare, and Rowe, but others who carry the burdens of established dioceses, where the troubles of one minister are multiplied upon the apostolic head by the number of parishes in his jurisdiction.

Again, at a summer resort on our North Atlantic Coast once familiar to me, there stood, within reach of fierce seas, one of the most charming of churches. It was sought daily by visitors, and many women, walking the shore, used to pause there to rest, for prayer, or out of sheer curiosity. And yet it appeared that no woman might venture into this edifice hatless. The locum tenens, recalling St. Paul’s question whether it is “comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered,” was so outraged by the visits of hatless women to the church that he tacked a notice on the door setting forth in severe terms that, whereas men should enter the church bareheaded, women should not desecrate the temple by entering uncovered. I remember that when I had read that warning, duly signed with the clergyman’s name, I sat down on the rocks and looked at the ocean for a long time, marveling that a sworn servant of God, consecrated in his service by the apostles’ successors, able to spend a couple of

months at one of the pleasantest summer resorts in America, should have been horror-struck at the unholy intrusion of a hatless girl in his church, when people in the hot city he had fled suffered and died, ignorant of the very name of Christ.

IV

“My church home” is an old phrase one still hears in communities whose social life is not yet wholly divorced from the church. There is something pleasant and reassuring in the sound of it; and I do not believe we shall ever have in America an adequate substitute for that tranquility and peace which are still observable in towns where the church retains its hold upon the larger part of the community, and where it exercises a degree of compulsion upon men and women who find in its life a faith and hope that have proved not the least strong of the bulwarks of democracy In wholly strange towns I have experienced the sense of this in a way I am reluctant to think wholly sentimental. Where, on crisp winter evenings, the young people come trooping happily in from the meetings of their own auxiliary societies, where vim and energy are apparent in the gathering congregation, and where one sees with half an eye that the pastor is a true leader and shepherd of his flock—in such a picture there must be, for many of us, something that lays deep hold upon the heart. They are not concerned in such gatherings with higher criticism, but with cleanness and wholesomeness of life, and with that faith, never to be too closely scrutinized or analyzed, that “singeth low in every heart.”

One might weep to think how rare those pictures must become—one might weep if there were not the great problems now forced upon us, of chance and change, that drive home to all thinking men and women the great need of infusing the life of the spirit into our industrial and political struggles. If, in the end, our great experiment in self-government fail, it will be through the loss of those spiritual forces which from the beginning have guided and ruled us. It is only lately that we have begun to hear of Christian socialism, and a plausible phrase it is; but true democracy seems to me essentially

Christian. When we shall have thoroughly christianized our democracy, and democratized our Christianity, we shall not longer yield to moods of despair, or hearken to prophets of woe.

The Smith for whom I presume to speak is not indifferent to the call of revitalized democracy. He has confessed to me his belief that the world is a kindlier place, and that more agencies of helpfulness are at work, than ever before; and to restore the recalcitrant Smith to the church it is necessary first of all to convince him that the church honestly seeks to be the chief of such agencies. The Young Men’s Christian Association, the Charity Organization Society, and the Settlement House all afford outlets for Smith’s generous benevolences. And it was a dark day for the church when she allowed these multiplying philanthropies to slip away from her. Smith points to them with a flourish, and says that he prefers to give his money where it is put to practical use. To him the church is an economic parasite, doing business on one day of the week, immune from taxation, and the last of his neighbors to scrape the snow from her sidewalks! The fact that there are within fifteen minutes’ walk of his house half a dozen churches, all struggling to maintain themselves, and making no appreciable impression upon the community, is not lost upon Smith,—the practical, unemotional, busy Smith. Smith speaks to me with sincere admiration of his friend, the Salvation Army major, to whom he opens his purse ungrudgingly; but the church over the way—that grim expensive pile of stone, closed for all but five or six hours of the week!—Smith shakes his head ruefully when you suggest it. It is to him a bad investment that ought to be turned over to a receiver for liquidation.

Smith’s wife has derived bodily and spiritual help from Christian Science, and Smith speaks with respect of that cult. He is half persuaded that there must be something in it. A great many of the Smiths who never had a church tie, or who gave up church-going, have allied themselves with Christian Science,—what many of Mrs. Eddy’s followers in familiar talk abbreviate as “Science,” as though Science were the more important half of it. This proves at least that the Smiths are not averse to some sort of spiritual food, or quite clearly demonstrates a dissatisfaction with the food they had

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CONTENTS

RAIN

ZACH

RAIN

Should Smith go to Church?

Should Smith go to Church?

II

IV