CHAPTER 55

This affair will not have an end, if it be of God, until all my friends desert me … and truth be left alone.

Martin Luther

Edith Frederick heard the whispered stories with disbelief and shock. It was true that everything in her background should have condemned the man who could generate such rumors. But Edith was not altogether a conventional woman. In dress she was conservative, in musical judgment ignorant, in social intercourse old-fashioned, in action timid. But the changes of the last thirty years in the city of Boston had administered innumerable small jolts, painful but instructive. And the changing nature of the congregation of the Church of the Commonwealth was an education in itself.

No longer was it made up of her own dear friends. It was a cross-section of a larger world. And the sermons of Martin Kraeger had chivvied her, nudged her farther and farther from the preconceptions with which she had been nourished. His beneficent ranting from the pulpit and his courtesy to her as a colleague had made of Edith Frederick a devoted advocate, anxious for his welfare.

She came to him at once. “Is Mr. Kraeger in?” she asked Loretta Fawcett, who was typing at her desk.

“Oh, he’s in,” said Loretta. Her eyes opened wide. Leaning over her desk, she whispered, “Did you hear—?”

Edith cut her off. “I don’t believe it for an instant.” She knocked on Martin’s door, he called, “Come in,” and Loretta was deprived of her sensational revelation.

For the next twenty minutes the conversation in Martin’s study was conducted in tones too low for Loretta to overhear, although she stopped typing and tried to listen. When Edith came out, Martin came with her. Edith’s soft old face was damp, and his was turned down to her with solicitude.

Loretta watched them walk together to the stairs. When Martin came back he smiled at Loretta, but she only stared blankly back at the monster who had molested his own little daughter.

He went into his office and shut the door. It was clear to him that Loretta’s response was a sample of what the entire congregation must be feeling. This morning Ken Possett had told him frankly that he had joined the opposition. Martin was grateful to Edith for remaining loyal, but she was only one old woman, even more fragile than she had seemed last week. Holbein’s bony skeleton was clinging to her more closely than ever, its grisly skull nudging her hollow cheek, its loving arm gripping her shoulder.

Martin could not help comparing her brittle old age with the plump good health of Kenneth Possett. Her elderly goodwill could never outbalance the strength of Ken’s hostility.