That afternoon, accompanied by a rather boyishly excited elderly
clergyman, he took two hours off from the mill and purchased a new car
for Doctor Haverford.
The rector was divided between pleasure at the gift and apprehension at
its cost, but Clayton, having determined to do a thing, always did it
well.
"Nonsense," he said. "My dear man, the church has owed you this car for
at least ten years. If you get half the pleasure out of using it that
I'm having in presenting it to you, it will be well worth while. I
only wish you'd let me endow the thing. It's likely to cost you a small
fortune."
Doctor Haverford insisted that he could manage that. He stood off,
surveying with pride not unmixed with fear its bright enamel, its
leather linings, the complicated system of dials and bright levers which
filled him with apprehension.
"Delight says I must not drive it," he said. "She is sure I would go too
fast, and run into things. She is going to drive for me."
"How is Delight?"
"I wish you could see her, Clayton. She--well, all young girls are
lovely, but sometimes I think Delight is lovelier than most. She is much
older than I am, in many ways. She looks after me like a mother. But she
has humor, too. She has been drawing the most outrageous pictures of
me arrested for speeding, and she has warned me most gravely against
visiting road houses!"
"But Delight will have to be taught, if she is to run the car."
"The salesman says they will send some one."
"They give one lesson, I believe. That's not enough. I think Graham
could show her some things. He drives well."
Flying uptown a little later in Clayton's handsome car, the rector
dreamed certain dreams. First his mind went to his parish visiting list,
so endless, so never cleaned up, and now about to be made a pleasure
instead of a penance. And into his mind, so strangely compounded of
worldliness and spirituality, came a further dream--of Delight and
Graham Spencer--of ease at last for the girl after the struggle to keep
up appearances of a clergyman's family in a wealthy parish.
Money had gradually assumed an undue importance in his mind. Every
Sunday, every service, he dealt in money. He reminded his people of the
church debt. He begged for various charities. He tried hard to believe
that the money that came in was given to the Lord, but he knew perfectly
well that it went to the janitor and the plumber and the organist. He
watched the offertory after the sermon, and only too often as he stood
waiting, before raising it before the altar, he wondered if the people
felt that they had received their money's worth.