“Behold the Christman!” said the Italian, repeating his favorite phrase in a reverent whisper.
The Professor of Theology heard it again; and repetition did not weaken its effect upon the Orthodox scholar. He removed his hat from his gray head. His wife held her delicate handkerchief to her eyes. Helen, struggling with herself, was pale with emotion. The Professor tried to speak.
“It is not,” he said, “precisely a doctrinal discourse, and his theology”—
The Professor checked himself. “It is written,” he said, “that the common people heardHimgladly. And it must be admitted that our dear young friend, His servant, seems to command that which—men older and—sounder than he, would give their lives—and fame—to—”
But there he choked, and tried to say no more.
There ought to have been a moon that night,and the electric jets at the crest of the beach had not been lighted. By the special request of the preacher, or by the forethought of the police, in view, perhaps, of the unusual size of the crowd, the lights now sprang out.
The throng dispersed slowly. The dark sea formed a sober background to the mass of quietly moving figures. The fishermen, with one foot on their dories, leaped in, and pushed off; scattered crews gathered gently, and rowed soberly back to their schooners. Groups collected around the preacher, waiting their turns for a word from his lips, or a touch from his hand. It was evident that he was very tired, but he refused himself to no one.
The summer people walked away softly. They passed through Angel Alley on their way to take the electric car. They looked up thoughtfully at the illuminated words swinging over their heads in fire of scarlet and white:—
“The Love of Christ.”
As she passed by the door of the mission, Helen was recognized by some of the women and children, who surrounded her affectionately, begging for some little service at her hands. It seemed to be desired that she should play or sing to them. While she stood, hesitating, between her father and her mother, Bayard himself, with a group of fishermen around him, came up Angel Alley.
“I will see that she is safely taken home, Professor, if you care to let her stay,” he said. “We won’t keep her—perhaps half an hour? Will that do? The people like to hear her sing; it helps to keep them out of the street.”
“Mr. Bayard will look after her, Haggai,” replied Mrs. Carruth wearily. “I see no objections, do you?”
Mrs. Carruth was very tired. Not to give a sober Monday to all the drunkards of Angel Alley would she have felt that she could stay another hour in that mob. She never saw such sights in Cesarea; where charity took a mild, ladylike form, consisting chiefly of missionary barrels, and Dorcas societies for the families of poor students who had no business to have married.
The Professor took her away. He wanted to tell his heretic graduate what he had thought about that service on the beach; indeed, he made one effort to do so, beginning slowly:—
“My dear Bayard, your discourse this evening”—
“To h—— with ’em!” cried Captain Hap in a thunderous sea-voice, at that moment. “Mr. Bayard! Mr. Bayard, sir! Come here! Here’s them two Trawlses a-tryin’ to toll Job Slip into their place! Mr. Bayard! Mr. Bayard!”
Mr. Bayard held out his hand to his Professor, and, smiling, shook his head. Then he vanished down the Alley. He had lingered only to say these words in Helen’s ear:—
“Go into the chapel and stay there till I come for you. Look after Lena—will you? I want her kept inside. Get her to singing with you, if you can.”
He called back over his shoulder:—
“I will bring her home, Mrs. Carruth, in half an hour. I will row her home, myself. I have a boat here.”
Professor Carruth stood for a moment watching the thronged, bright doorway into which his daughter had disappeared. The fishermen and the drunkards, the Windover widows in their crape and calico, the plain, obscure, respectable parishioners, and the girls from the street moved in together beneath the white and scarlet lights. Helen’s voice sounded suddenly through the open windows. She sang:—
“I need Thee every hour.Stay Thou near by.”
“Hello, Bob,” said a voice in the street. “That’s the minister’s hymn.” Groups of men moved over from the grogshop to the chapel door. They collected, and increased in numbers. One man struck into the chorus, on a low bass,—
“Stay near me, O my Saviour.”
Another voice joined; and another. Up and down the street the men took the music up. From Angel Alley without, and Christlove within, the voices of the people met and mingled in“the parson’s hymn.”
The Professor of Theology glanced at the illuminated words above his head.
“It is growing chilly. I am sure you will take cold,” complained his wife. With bared, gray head the Professor walked out of Angel Alley, and his old wife clung silently to his arm. She felt that this was one of the moments when Mr. Carruth should not be spoken to.
Bayard brought Helen home as he had promised; and it was but a little beyond the half of the hour when his dory bumped against the float. He rowed her over the dim harbor with long, skillful strokes; Helen fancied that they were not as strong as they might have been; he seemed to her almost exhausted. They had exchanged but a few words. Midway of the harbor she had said abruptly,—
“Mr. Bayard, I cannot keep it to myself! I must tell you how what you said this evening on the beach—how that service made me feel.”
“Don’t!” said Bayard quickly. Helen shrank back into the stern of the dory; she felt, for the moment, terribly wounded.
“Forgive me!” he pleaded. “I didn’t feel as if I could bear it—that’s all.”
“I am not in the habit of making a fool of myself over ministers,” replied Helen hotly. “I never told one I liked his sermon, yet, in all my life. I was going to say—I meant to say—Iwillsay!” she cried, sitting up very straight,“Mr. Bayard, you are better than I am; truly, infinitely, solemnly better. I’ve never eventriedto be what youare. You’ve done me good, as well as Job, and Lena, and the rest. Iwon’tgo away without saying it,—and I’m going away this week.... There!”
She drew a long breath and leaned back.
Bayard rowed on for some moments in inscrutable silence. It was too dark to see the expression of his face. When he spoke, it was in a half-articulate, tired way.
“I did not know. Are you coming back?”
“I am going to Campo Bello with the Rollinses,” replied Helen briefly. “I don’t expect to come back again this year.”
“I wonder I had not thought of it,” said Bayard slowly. “I did not,” he added.
“The people will miss you,” he suggested, after a miserable pause.
“Oh, they will get used to that,” said Helen.
“AndI?” he asked, in a tone whose anguish smote suddenly upon her ears, like a mortal cry. “What is to become ofme?”
“You’ll get used to it, too,” she said, thrusting out her hands in that way she had.
His oars dropped across his knees.
Before either of them could speak or think or reason, he had caught one of her outstretched hands. It lay, warm, soft, quivering,—a terrible temptation in the grasp of the devotee.
He could have devoured it—her—soul and body; he could have killed her with kisses; he could have murdered her with love.
Instead, he laid Helen’s hand down gently. He did not so much as lift it to his starving lips. He laid it down upon her own lap quite solemnly, as if he relinquished something unspeakably precious. He took up his oars, and rowed her home.
Neither had spoken again. Helen’s heart beat wildly. She dared not look at him. Under the solitary lantern of the deserted float she felt his strong gaze upon her, and it looked, not with the eyes of angels, but with the eyes of a man.
“Oh, my dear, I love you!” he breathed in a broken voice.
Saying this, and only this, he led her to her father’s door, and left her.
The mosquito-net portière swayed softly in the night wind. Emanuel Bayard sat in his study and looked about the poor place, gasping, like a man who has received or given a mortal hurt. The marred face of the great Christ looked through the coarse, white gauze; it seemed to scrutinize him sternly; he bowed his head before the gaze of the picture.
The gradual descent from a spiritual height to a practical level is, at best, a strain under which the godliest nature quivers; but Bayard experienced the shock of a plunge. From the elation of the past hour to the consternation of the present moment was a long leap.
He closed his eyes to see the blood-red sunset unfurling its flag over the broad beach; he opened them to see Mrs. Granite’s kerosene lamp smoking on the study-table of grained pine wood. The retina of his soul suffered an adjustment as abrupt and as severe. But an hour ago, a thousand people had hung swaying upon the breath that went forth from between his lips; their upturned faces offered him that most exquisite of flatteries—the reverence of a great audience for an orator who has mastered them. We should remember that—thereligious orator stands, both in privilege and in peril, apart from his kind. He may suffer at once the subtlest of human dangers, and the deepest of human joys. Bayard trembled yet with the exaltation of that solemn hour.
Midway between earth and heaven, commissioner between man and his Maker, he had stood transcendent, well-nigh translated. He had floated in the adoration of his people; he had been to them one of the sons of God; he had held their bare souls in his hand.
While his head whirled with the suffocation of the incense, he had stumbled. He had made the misstep which to a lofty soul may give more anguish than guilt to the low. He had fallen from the heights of his own faith in himself, sheer over, and below the ideal which those upon whose worshiping love he lived trustfully cherished of him.
An hour ago, he was a man of God. Now he called himself less than a man among men.
Bound by every claim of spiritual and of human honor to preserve the strong silence by which a man protects a woman from himself, and himself from her, he had weakly, to his high view it seemed he had ignobly, broken it. He had declared love to a woman whom he could not ask to be his wife. To crown the pity of it and the shame, he had turned on his heel, and left her—so!
“I have done a thing for which I would have thrashed a man who had done as much by a sister of mine!” said this young apostle between histeeth. It did not occur to him that he might be liable to overestimate the situation. Religious exaltation exposes a sensitive nature to mental and spiritual excess as dangerous in its way as physical dissipation. Bayard stood in that great desert known only to fine souls, where the noblest side of a man seems to take up arms against him; and where the very consecrated weapons by which he has battled his way to purity, unselfishness, and peace turn themselves like sentient foes and smite him. He seemed to stand unarmed and defenceless before forces of evil whose master he had been so long, that he looked upon their defiant faces with more astonishment than fear.
“This is an insurrection of slaves,” he thought. He looked blindly about his dreary room.
“Down!” he said, as if he had been speaking to dogs.
And now—what? It seemed to his quivering sensibility a proof that he had fallen to a far depth, that the first, bare instinct of his anguish was not to say, “What is my duty in this thing?” but, “How shall I bear it?”
With that automatism of Christian habit which time and trouble may teach the coldest scoffer to respect, Bayard’s hand groped for his Bible. We have seen this touching movement in the sick, the aged, the bereaved, and in the utterly alone; and who of us has been so poor in spirit as to do it irreverence? In so young a man this desolate instinct had a deep significance.
Bayard’s Bible opened at the New Testament, whose worn pages moved apart, at a touch, like lips that would answer him.
As he took the book something fell from it to the floor. He stooped, holding his finger between the open leaves, and picked the object up. It was a flower—a pressed flower—the saxifrage that he had gathered from the hem of her dress on the sand of the beach, that April day.
The Bible fell from his knee. He snatched the dead flower to his lips, and kissed it passionately.
“There was another, too,” he hungrily said. “There was a pansy. She left it on the sofa pillow in this room. The pansy! the pansy!”
He took up the Bible, and searched feverishly. But he could not find the pansy; the truth being that Jane Granite had seen it on the study-table, and had dusted it away.
He laid the Bible down upon the table, and seized the saxifrage. He kissed it again and again; he devoured it over and over; he held it in the palm of his hand, and softly laid his cheek upon it....
Behind the white gauze, the Christ on the wall looked down. Suddenly Bayard raised his haggard face. The eyes of the picture and the eyes of the man met.
“Anything but this—everything but this—Thou knowest.” Aloud, Bayard uttered the words as if he expected to be heard.
“Onlythis—the love of man for woman—how canstThouunderstand?”
Bayard arose to his full height; he lifted his hands till they touched the low, cracked ceiling; it seemed to him as if he lifted them into illimitable heaven; as if he bore on them the greatest mystery and the mightiest woe of all the race. His lips moved; only inarticulate whispers came from them.
Then his hands fell, and his face fell into them.
Bayard went to her like a man, and at once. At an hour of the morning so early that he felt obliged to apologize for his intrusion, his sleepless face appeared at the door of her father’s cottage.
He had no more idea, even yet, what he should say to her than the Saint Michael over his study-table. He felt in himself a kind of pictorial helplessness; as if he represented something which he was incapable of expressing. His head swam. He leaned back on the bamboo chair in the parlor. Through the soft stirring of the lace curtains he watched a fleet start out, and tack across the harbor. He interested himself in the greenish-white sails of an old schooner with a new suit on. He found it impossible to think coherently of the interview which awaited him.
A hand fell on the latch of the door. He turned—ah!
“Good-morning, Professor,” said Bayard, rising manfully. His pale face, if possible, turned a shadewhiter. It seemed to him the fitting sequel to his weakness that he should be called to account by the girl’s father. “I have deserved it,” he thought.
“Ah, Bayard, this is too bad!” said the Professor of Theology, cordially holding out his hand. “You have just missed my daughter. I am sure she will regret it. She took the twenty minutes past seven train.”
“Took thetrain?” panted Bayard.
“She has gone to join some friends of ours—the Rollinses, at Campo Bello. She did not intend to leave for some days; but the mood took her, and off she started. I think, indeed, she went without her breakfast. Helen is whimsical at times. Do be seated! We will do our poor best to take my daughter’s place,” pursued the Professor, smiling indulgently; “and I’m especially glad of this opportunity, Bayard, to tell you how much I was impressed by your discourse last night. I don’t mind saying so at all.”
“Thank you, Professor,” said Bayard faintly.
“It was not theology, you know,” observed the Professor, still smiling; “you can’t expect me to admit that it was sound, Bayard. But I must say, sir, Idosay, that I defy any council in New England to say it was not Christianity!”
“Thank you, Professor,” repeated Bayard, more faintly than before. He found it impossible to talk about theology, or even Christianity. The Professor felt rather hurt that the young man took his leave so soon.
He had thought of inviting him into the clam study, and reading some extracts from the essay on the State of the Unforgiven after Death.
Bayard went back to his own rooms, and wrote to her; if he could have done so, he would have followed her to Campo Bello by the next boat. The pitiable fact was, that he could not raise the money for the trip. It occurred to him to force the occasion and borrow it—of his treasurer, of George Fenton, of his uncle; but he dismissed these fantasies as madness, and swiftly wrote:—
I hurried to you at the first decent moment this morning; but I was not early enough by an hour.The reason why I do not—why I cannot follow you, by the next train, perhaps you will understand without my being forced to explain. I take the only method left to me of justifying myself—if it is possible for me to do that—in your eyes.I dare not believe—I dare not hope, that what I have done can mean any more toyouthan passing embarrassment to a friendship whose value and permanence shall not be disturbed by my weakness if I can help it.I love you. I ought not to have told you so. I did not mean to tell you so.But I love you! A man situated as I am has no right to declare his feeling for a woman like yourself. This wrong have I done—not to you; I do not presume to dream that I could therebyin any way wrongyou—but to myself, and to my love for you. It was my sacred secret; it is now your absolute possession. Do with it—and with me—as you will.Emanuel Bayard.
I hurried to you at the first decent moment this morning; but I was not early enough by an hour.
The reason why I do not—why I cannot follow you, by the next train, perhaps you will understand without my being forced to explain. I take the only method left to me of justifying myself—if it is possible for me to do that—in your eyes.
I dare not believe—I dare not hope, that what I have done can mean any more toyouthan passing embarrassment to a friendship whose value and permanence shall not be disturbed by my weakness if I can help it.
I love you. I ought not to have told you so. I did not mean to tell you so.
But I love you! A man situated as I am has no right to declare his feeling for a woman like yourself. This wrong have I done—not to you; I do not presume to dream that I could therebyin any way wrongyou—but to myself, and to my love for you. It was my sacred secret; it is now your absolute possession. Do with it—and with me—as you will.
Emanuel Bayard.
He dispatched this note by the first mail to Campo Bello, and waited in such patience as he could command for such answer as she chose to make him. He waited a miserable time. At the end of that week came a letter in her strong, clear hand. He shut himself into his rooms, turned the key, and read:—
My dear Mr. Bayard:—I am not quite sure that I entirely understand you. But I believe in you, altogether; and what I do not understand, I am proud to take on trust.The love of a man like yourself would be a tribute to any woman. I shall count it the honor of my life that you have given it to me. And I shall be, because of it, all the more and always,Your loyal friend,Helen Carruth.
My dear Mr. Bayard:—I am not quite sure that I entirely understand you. But I believe in you, altogether; and what I do not understand, I am proud to take on trust.
The love of a man like yourself would be a tribute to any woman. I shall count it the honor of my life that you have given it to me. And I shall be, because of it, all the more and always,
Your loyal friend,
Helen Carruth.
This composed and womanly reply did not serve to quell the agitation in which Bayard had awaited it. He read and re-read, studied and scrutinized the few self-contained words with a sense of helplessness which equaled his misery.His position seemed to him intolerable. Something undignified about it cut the proud fellow to the quick. He had thought himself prepared for any natural phase in the lot which he had elected. In the old language which the devotees of ages have instinctively used, and which to each solitary heart seems a figure of speech as new as its own anguish, Bayard had believed himself able to “bear his cross.” He had now to learn that, in the curious, complex interplay of human life, a man may not be able even to wear his burden alone, and drop decently under it when the time comes. Suppose, as the cross-bearer crawls along in blood and dust, that the arm of the coarse wood strikes and bruises the delicate flesh of a woman’s shoulder?
Suppose—oh, suppose the unsupposable, the maddening!
Suppose she might have been led, taught by his great love to love him? What then?
Because a man had a duty to God, had he none to a woman?
After a night of sleepless misery, he wrote again:—
Is there no way in which I can see you—if only for a moment? Shall you be in Boston—if you are not coming to Windover—on your return home? This is more than I can bear.Yours utterly,E. B.
Is there no way in which I can see you—if only for a moment? Shall you be in Boston—if you are not coming to Windover—on your return home? This is more than I can bear.
Yours utterly,
E. B.
And Helen answered:—
My dear Friend:—Mother wrote me yesterday that she needed my help in packing. We go back to Cesarea on the 9th, and I shall therefore be in Windover for the twenty-four hours preceding our start.... Do not suffer so! I told you that I trusted you. And I always shall.Yours faithfully,H. C.
My dear Friend:—Mother wrote me yesterday that she needed my help in packing. We go back to Cesarea on the 9th, and I shall therefore be in Windover for the twenty-four hours preceding our start.... Do not suffer so! I told you that I trusted you. And I always shall.
Yours faithfully,
H. C.
It was a chilly September evening. The early dark of the coming autumn leaned from a clouded sky. The goldenrod and asters on the side of the avenue looked dim under the glimmer of the hotel lights; and the scarlet petals of the geraniums in the flower-beds were falling. In the harbor the anchored fleets flung out their headlights above a tossing sea. There was no rowing. The floats were deserted.
The guests, few now, and elect, of the sort that know and love the September Windover, clustered around the fireplace in the big parlor of the Mainsail. On the piazza of the Flying Jib the trunks stood strapped for the late evening porter and the early morning train. Bayard heard Helen’s voice in the rooms overhead, while he sat, with whirling brain, making such adieus as he could master to Professor and Mrs. Carruth. He thought that the Professor looked at him with unwonted keenness; he might have called it sternness, ifhe had given himself time to reflect upon it. Reflect he did not, would not. He asked distinctly for Miss Helen. Her mother went to call her, and did not return. Professor Carruth lingered a few moments, and excused himself. The proofs of the article on the Unforgiven had come by the evening mail; he had six galleys to correct that night. He shook hands with Bayard somewhat abstractedly, and went over to the clam study, swinging a lantern on his thin arm to light the meadow path.
“It is too cold for Father over there, to-night,” said Helen immediately, when she and Bayard were left alone. “I don’t think he ought to go. The Unforgiven are always up to some mischief. I would accept the doctrine of eternal punishment to get rid of them. I’m glad they’ve got as far along towards it as proof-sheets.”
“Am I keeping your father out of this warm room?” asked Bayard with his quick perception. He glanced at the open fire on the hearth. “That won’t do!” he said decidedly, rising.
“Oh, I didn’t meanthat!” cried Helen, flushing.
“It is true, all the same, whether you meant it or not,” returned Bayard. “I shall stay but a few moments. Would you mind putting on something warm, and walking with me—for a little? We can go over to the clam study and get him.”
“Very well,” said Helen somewhat distantly.
She wore a summer traveling-dress of purple serge, fastened at the throat with a gold pansy. A long, thick cape with a hood lay upon the sofa.
“Mother’s waterproof will do,” she said. She wrapped it quickly around her, and they started out. Something in the utter absence of vanity which led a girl at such a moment to wear the most unbecoming thing that she could put hands on, roused a keen throb of admiration in Bayard. Then he remembered, with a pang, the anomaly of the situation. Why should shewishto make herself beautiful to him? What had he done—great heavens! whatcouldhe do, to deserve or to justify the innocent coquetries of a beloved and loving woman?
Helen pulled the hood of the cloak far over her head. And yet, what a look she had! The severity and simplicity of her appearance added to the gravity of her face a charm which he had never seen before. How womanly, how strong, how rich and ripe a being! He drew her hand through his arm authoritatively. She did not resent this trifling act of mastery. His fingers trembled; his arm shook as she leaned upon it. They struck out upon the meadow path in the dark, and, for a moment, neither spoke. Then he said:—
“I have something to say to you. I shall wait till we have sent the Professor back.”
“That will be better,” said Helen, not withoutembarrassment. They came to the clam study, and he waited outside while she said:—
“Come, Papa! Put the Unforgiven in your pocket, and go back to the fire! Mr. Bayard and I are going to walk.”
The Professor meekly obeyed, and Helen locked the door of the fish-house, and put the key in her pocket.
“I shall give it to Mr. Salt to-night,” she said. “We start at 7.20. Pepper is going to take us over.”
These trivial words staggered Bayard’s self-control.
“You always leave—so—early!” he stammered.
“Does that make it any worse?” she asked, trying to smile. It was not a very successful smile, and Bayard saw it. They were approaching the electric arc that lighted the entrance to the beach. The cold, light lay white on her face. Its expression startled him.
“Everything makes it worse!” he groaned. “It is as bad as it can be!”
“I can see how it might have been worse,” said Helen.
“That’s more than I can do. What do you mean?”
“I would rather not tell you,” replied Helen with gentle dignity.
“Tell me what you mean!”
He turned about and lifted her averted face; hetouched her with the tip of one trembling finger under the chin.
“I prefer not to tell you, Mr. Bayard.”
She did not flush, nor blush. Her eyes met his steadily. Something in them sent the mad color racing across his face.
“Forgive me! I have no right to insist—I forgot—I have none to anything. I have no right to hear—to see—anything. God have mercy upon me!”
He put out his shaking hand, and gently covered with it her uplifted eyes; veiling from his own gaze the most sacred sight on earth. It was a beautiful act, and so delicately done that Helen felt as if a spirit had touched her.
But when she came to herself, and gave him her eyes again, with their accustomed, calm, feminine disguise, she saw no spirit, but the passionate face of a man who loved her and despaired of her as she had seen no man love or despair before.
“I cannot even ask for the chance totry,” he cried. “I am as much shut out as a beggar in the street. I ought to be as dumb before you as the thousand-years’ dead! And yet, God help me—I am a live man and I love you. I have no right to seek a right—I wrong you and myself by every word I say, by every moment I spend in your presence. Good-by!” he said with cruel abruptness, holding out his hand.
Helen did not take it. She turned her back to the great arc, and looked out to sea. Her figure,in its hooded cloak, stood strongly against the cold, white light. The tide rose upon the deserted beach insistently. The breakers roared on the distant shore.
“You must see—you must understand,” he groaned. “I am a poor man—poorer than you ever took the trouble to think. A heretic, unpopular, out of the world, an obscure, struggling fellow, slighted, forgotten—no friends but a handful of fishermen and drunkards—and living on—what do you suppose my salary is?”
“It never occurred to me to suppose,” said Helen, lifting her head proudly.
“Five hundred dollars a year; to be collected if possible, to be dispensed with if necessary.”
He jerked the words out bitterly. His fancy, with terrible distinctness, took forbidden photographs by flashlight. He saw this daughter of conventional Cesarea, this child of ease and indulgence, living at Mrs. Granite’s, boarding on prunes and green tea. He saw her trying to shake down the coal fire on a January day, while he was out making parish calls; sitting in the bony rocking-chair with the turkey-red cushion, beside the screen where the paper Cupid forever tasted uneaten fruit. He saw the severe Saint Michael looking down from the wall on that young, warm woman-creature. He saw her sweep across the old, darned carpet in her purple robes, with gold at her throat and wrists. He saw her lift her soft arms. He saw—Now he put his hands before his own eyes.
“Oh, do not suffer so!” said Helen, in a faltering voice. “Do not, do not mind it—so much! It—it breaks my heart!”
These timid, womanly words recalled Bayard to himself.
“Before I break your heart,” he cried, “I ought to be sawn asunder!
“... Let us talk of this a little,” he said in a changed tone. “Just a word. You must see—youmustunderstand my position. What another man would say, in my place, I cannot say—to any woman. What I would die for the right to ask, I may not ask.”
“I understand,” said Helen almost inaudibly.
She still stood with her back to the light, and her face to the sea.
“I love you! I love you!” he repeated. “It isbecauseI love you—Oh, do you see?Canyou see?”
Helen made no reply. Was it possible that she dared not trust herself, at that moment, to articulate? Her silence seemed to the tortured man more cruel than the bitterest word which ever fell from the lip of a proud and injured woman.
Now again the camera of his whirling brain took instantaneous negatives. He saw himself doing what other men had done before him: abandoning a doubtful experiment of the conscience to win a woman’s love. He saw himself chopping the treadmill of his unpopular, unsuccessful work to chips; a few strong blows would do it; thediscouraged people would merge themselves in the respectable churches; the ripples that he had raised in the fishing-town would close over, and his submerged work would sink to the bottom and leave no sign. A few reformed drunkards would go on a spree; a few fishermen would feel neglected for awhile: the scarlet and white fires of the Church of the Love of Christ would go out on Angel Alley. In a year Windover would be what Windover was. The eye of the great Christ would gaze no more upon him through the veil of coarse gauze; while he—free—a new man—with life before him, like other men, and the right to love—like any other man—
“That,” he said solemnly, as if he had spoken aloud, “is impossible. There could be only that one way. I cannot take it.”
“No,” she said, lifting her head, as if he had explained it all to her; “no. You could never dothat. I would not have you do that for—for all that could happen—for—” she faltered.
“Great God!” thought Bayard, “and I cannot evenaskher how much she cares—if she could ever learn or try to love me.”
He felt suddenly a strange weakness. He leaned against a boulder for support, coughing painfully. It seemed to him as if he were inwardly bleeding to death.
“Oh!” cried Helen, turning about swiftly and showing her own white face.“You are not well—you suffer. This will not—must not—I cannot bear it!” she said bravely, but with a quivering lip. “Give me your arm, Mr. Bayard, and let us get home.”
He obeyed her in silence. He felt, in truth, too spent to speak. They got back to the door of the cottage, and Helen led him in. Her father was not in the parlor, and her mother had gone to bed. The fire had fallen to embers. Helen motioned him to an easy-chair, and knelt, coaxing the blaze, and throwing on pine wood to start it. She looked so womanly, so gentle, so home-like, and love-like, on her knees in the firelight there, caring for the comfort of the exhausted man, that the sight was more than he could bear. He covered his eyes.
“The fire flares so, coming in from the dark,” he said.
She stepped softly about, and brought him wine and crackers, but he shook his head.
“My little tea-urn is packed,” she said, smiling, trying to look as if nothing had happened. “I would have made you such a cup of tea as you never tasted!”
“Spare me!” he pleaded. “Don’t you suppose I know that?”
He rose manfully, as soon as he could. She stood in the firelight, looking up. A quiver passed over her delicate chin. He held out his hand. She put her strong, warm clasp within it.
“I told you that I trusted you,” she said distinctly.“Believe me, and go in peace.”
“I don’t know another woman in the world who would!” cried Bayard.
“Then let me be that only one,” she answered. “I am proud to be.”
He could not reply. They stood with clasped hands. Their eyes did not embrace, but comradeship entered them.
“You will let me write?” he pleaded, at last.
“Yes.”
“And see you—sometimes.”
“Yes.”
“And trust me—in spite of all?”
“I have said it.”
“My blessing isn’t worth much,” he said brokenly, “but for what it is—Oh, my Love, God go with you!”
“And stay with you!” she whispered.
He laid her hand gently down, and turned away. She heard him shut the door, and walk feebly, coughing, up the avenue. He looked back, once. He saw her standing between the lace curtains with her arms upraised, and her hand above her eyes, steadily looking out into the dark.
So Emanuel Bayard entered into his Wilderness. Therein he was tempted like other men of God who renounce the greatest joy of life for its grandest duty. There he thirsted and hungered, and put forth no hand towards the meat or drink of human comfort; there he contended with himself, and hid his face, for he went into solitary places, and prayed apart, asking for that second strength which sustains a man in the keeping of the vow that he has not feared to take upon his soul—not knowing, till God teaches him, how easy it is to recognize, and how hard to hold, “the highest when we see it.”
Winter drew its yoke of ice about the shrinking shoulders of the Cape; the fleets huddled in the harbor; the fishermen drowned on the Grand Banks; Windover shivered and shriveled, and looked with wincing, winking eyes upon the blinding horizon of the winter sea; the breakers broke in white fire upon the bar; Angel Alley drank and cursed to keep warm; and the young preacher’s delicate face, patiently passing in and out beneath the white and scarlet lights of the chapel of Christlove, gathered a snowdrift of its own with the whitening of the year.
His work, like most service sustained in consecration and in common sense by one pure and strong personality, grew upon his hands; not steadily, but by means of much apparent failure.
The fame of the heretic missionary had gone abroad as such things do. It was no uncommon thing for members of the strictest sect of the Orthodox churches to stand half curious, half deferent, and wholly perplexed by what they saw and heard, and calculating the prospects of an experiment which the observer was, as a rule, too wise a man or too good a woman not to respect.
It even happened now and then that some distinguished clergyman was seen jammed between a fisherman and a drunkard in the crush by the door; taking notes of the sermon, studying the man and his methods with the humility characteristic of large men, and seldom imitated by little ones.
The Reverend George Fenton was not, but would have liked to be, one of these eminent and docile clerical visitors at the chapel of Christlove. He dared not leave his congregation, decorously scattered to listen to a sound theology, in the pews of the old First Church, to elbow his unnoticed way among the publicans and sinners who thronged his classmate’s mission; but he often wished he could. He asked himself anxiously: “What is the secret? How does the man do it?” Sometimes he envied his heretic friend the drunkards, and sailors, the reckless girls, and most of all the fishermen, sacred in the canon and to the imaginationof the church,—the fishermen, once the chosen friends of Our Lord.
Bayard even fancied that Fenton looked at him a little wistfully; and that he spoke with him oftener and lingered longer when they met upon the streets of the sad and tempted town whose redemption both men, each in his own way, desired and sought, with a sincerity which this biography would not intimate was to be found only in the heart of its subject, and hero. For the Reverend George Fenton was no hypocrite, or Pharisee; the prevailing qualities of his class not being of this sort. No one rated him more generously than his heretic classmate; or looked more gently upon the respectable, dreary effort to save the world by an outgrown method, which the conformer dutifully and comfortably sustained.
“I heard a Boston man call you the Father Taylor of Windover,” one day abruptly said the clergyman to the missionary, upon the post-office steps. “Boston could no farther go, I take it. I hear your audience has outgrown your mission-room. That must be a great encouragement; you must consider it a divine leading,” added Fenton, with the touch of professional slang and jealousy not unnatural to better men than he. “But you must remember that we, too, are following the Master in our way; it’s a pretty old and useful way.”
Then up spoke Captain Hap, who stood at Bayard’s elbow.
“It’s jest about here, Mr. Fenton. You folks set out tofollerHim; but our minister, heliveslike Him. There’s an almighty difference.”
Another day, Fenton, with his young wife on his arm, came down Angel Alley with the air of a tourist inspecting the points of interest in a new vicinity.
“Bayard!” he exclaimed; “you look as white as a Cesarea snowdrift. You are overworked, man. What can I do, to help you?—If thereisanything,” he added with genuine concern, “you’d let me know, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably not, Fenton,” replied Bayard, smiling.
“I mean it,” urged the other, flushing.
“If you do, the time may come,” said Bayard dreamily.
He glanced at his old friend,—the rosy, well-fed man; at the round face destitute of the carving of great purpose or deep anxiety; at the pretty girl with the Berkshire eyes who looked adoringly over the sleek elbow to which she clung. These two well-meaning, commonplace people seemed ennobled and beautified, as commoner far than they may be, by their human love and happiness. Bayard, in his shabby clothes, with his lonely face, watched them with a certain reverence.
He thought—but when did henotthink of Helen?
He wrote; she answered; they did not meet; he worked on patiently; and the winter went.Bayard drowned himself in his work with the new and conscious ardor of supreme renunciation. He thought of the woman whom he loved, as the diver at the bottom of the sea, when the pumps refuse to work, thinks of sky and shore and sun, of air and breath.
One bleak, bright February night, Bayard came out from his mission, and looked about Angel Alley anxiously.
Bob was within, and Tony and Jean were safe; Job Slip was sober, and Tom, Dick, and Harry were accounted for. But Lena—Lena had not been seen at Christlove for now many weeks.
The waywardness of the girl had long been sore at Bayard’s heart, and the step which he took that night was the result of thought and deliberate purpose. Afterwards he was glad to remember that he had acted on no one of those mere sentiments or impulsive whims which are the pitfalls of a philanthropic life.
The hour was not early, decent people were scattering to their homes, and Windover was giving herself over to the creatures of the night. It was a windy night, and the snow blew in cold, white powder from the surface of drifts called heavy for the coast, and considered a sign of “a spell of weather.”
There was a full moon; and the harbor, as one looked down between the streets, showed in glints and glimpses, bright and uneasy. The bellow ofthe whistling-buoy nine miles out, off the coast, was audible at firesides. The wind sped straight from Cape Cod, and was as icy as death.
It was one of the nights when the women of Windover grow silent, and stand at the window with the shade raised, looking out between their hands, with anxious, seaward eyes. “God pity the men at sea!” they say who have no men at sea. But those who have say nothing. They pray. As the night wears on, and the gale increases, they weep. They do not sleep. The red light on the Point goes out, and dawn is gray. The buoy shrieks on malignantly. It “comes on thick”; and the fog-bell begins to toll. Its mighty lips utter the knell for all the unburied drowned that are, and have been, and are yet to be. Windover listens and shudders. It is one of the nights when the sheltered and the happy and the clean of life bless God for home, for peace, for fire and pillow. It is one of the nights when the soul of the gale enters into the soul of the tempted and the unbefriended, and with it seven devils worse than the first. It was one of the nights when girls like Lena are too easy or too hard to find.
Bayard sought her everywhere. She was not to be seen in Angel Alley, and he systematically and patiently searched the town. With coat-collar turned up, and hat turned down, he tried to keep warm, but the night was deadly bleak. It came on to be eleven o’clock; half past; and midnight approached. He was about to abandon hisquest when he struck a trace of her, and with redoubled patience he hunted it down. He had taken no one with him in his search for Lena; in truth, he knew of no person in all that Christian town who would have wished to share that night’s repulsive errand if he had asked it. He recognized this fact with that utter absence of bitterness which is the final grace and test of dedication to an unselfish end.
“Why should I expect it?” he thought gently. “Duty is not subject to a common denominator. This is mine and not another’s.”
A policeman gave him, at last, the clew he needed; and Bayard, who had returned on his track to Angel Alley, halted before the door of a house at the end of a dark court, within a shell’s-throw of the wharves. His duty had never led him before into precisely such a place, and his soul sickened within him. He hesitated, with his foot on the steps.
“Better stay outside, sir,” suggested the policeman.
Bayard shook his head.
“Shan’t I go with you, sir? You don’t know what you’re about. Better have an officer along.”
“Stay here, within call, will you?” answered Bayard. “That will do. The law can’t do my errand.”
“Nor nothin’ else in this town butthat,” returned the officer, touching his helmet.
He pointed up the Alley where the large lettersof the solemn white and scarlet sign blazed all night before the chapel of Christlove. The fishermen could see it from their schooners’ decks as they dropped anchors; and it shone strangely in their weather-beaten faces as they pushed past—or sank into—the doors of the dens that lined the street.
Bayard’s eye followed the officer’s finger, lighting with that solemn radiance peculiar to himself; and with this illumination on his face he entered the place whose ways take hold on death.
The officer waited without. In an incredibly short time the minister reappeared. He was not alone. Lena followed him with hanging head.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Bayard quietly, touching his hat, “I shall need you no longer.”
He turned, with the girl beside him, and crossed the Alley. The officer, with a low whistle, lingered a moment, and watched the astounding pair. In the full moonlight, in the sight of all whom it did or did not concern, Bayard walked up and down the street with Lena. It was now near to the stroke of midnight. The two could be seen conversing earnestly. Lena did not raise her eyes. The minister watched her eagerly. They paced up and down. Men staggering home from their sprees stood stupidly and stared at the two. Old Trawl came to his door and saw them, and called Ben, who looked, and swore the mighty oath of utter intellectual confusion. The minister nodded to Ben, and spoke once or twice to some sailor who awaited salutation; but he suffered no interruptionof his interview with the girl. In the broad moonlight he continued quietly to walk up and down Angel Alley, with the street-girl at his side.
“Lena,” Bayard had begun, “I have been trying to help the people in this Alley for almost a year and a half, and I have met with nothing to discourage me as much as you do. Some men and women have grown better, and some have not changed at all. You are growing worse.”
“That’s so,” assented Lena. “It’s as true as Hell.”
“I begin to think,” replied the minister, “that it must be partly my fault. It seems to me as if I must have failed, somehow, or made some mistake—or you would be a better girl, after all this time. Do you think of anything—Come, Lena! Give your best attention to the subject—Do you think of anything that I could do, which I have not done, to induce you to be a decent woman?”
“I tried, for you!” muttered Lena. “I tried; you know I did!”
“Yes, I know you did; and I appreciated it. You failed, that was all. You are discouraged, and so am I. Now, tell me! What else can I do, to make a good girl of you? For it’s got to be done, you see,” he added firmly. “I can’t have this any longer. You disgrace the chapel, and the people, and me. It makes me unhappy, Lena.”
“Mr. Bayard! Mr. Bayard!” said Lena with trembling lip,“I’ll go drown in the outer harbor. I ain’t fit to live ... ifyoucare. I didn’t suppose youcared.”
“You are not fit to die, Lena,” returned Bayard gently. “And I do care. I have always thought you were born to be a fine woman. There’s something I like about you. You are generous, and brave, and kind-hearted. Then see what a voice you have! You might have been a singer, Lena, and sung noble things—the music that makes people purer and better. You might have”....
“Oh, my God!” cried Lena; “I was singin’ in that—in there—to-night. They’re always after me to sing ’em into damnation.”
“Lena,” said Bayard in a thrilling tone, “look into my face!”
She obeyed him. High above her short stature Bayard’s delicate countenance looked down at the girl. All the loathing, all the horror, all the repulsion that was in him for the sin he suffered the sinner to see for the first time. His tender face darkened and quivered, shrinking like some live thing that she tormented.
“Oh,” wailed Lena, “am I likethat—to you? Is it as bad asthat?”
“It is as bad as that,” answered the minister solemnly.
“Then I’ll go drown,” said Lena dully; “I might as well.”
“No,” he said quietly.“You will not drown. You will live, and make yourself a girl whom I can respect.”
“Would youeverrespect me—respectme, if I was to be—if I was to do what you say?” asked Lena in a low, controlled tone.
“I should respect you from my soul,” said Bayard.
“Would you—would you be willing to—would you feel ashamed to shake hands with me, Mr. Bayard,—if I was a different girl?”
“I will shake hands with you now,” returned the minister quietly, “if you will give me your word of honor that you will never, from this hour”—
“I will never, from this hour, so help me God!” said Lena solemnly.
“So help her, God!” echoed Bayard.
He lifted his hand above her head, as if in prayer and blessing; then gently extended it. The girl’s cold, purple fingers shook as he touched them. She held her bare hand up in the moonlight, as if to bathe it in whiteness.
“Mr. Bayard, sir,” she said in her ordinary voice, “it is a bargain.”
Bayard winced, in spite of himself, at the words; but he looked at Lena’s face, and when he saw its expression he felt ashamed of his own recoil.
“Very well,” he answered, adopting her business-like tone, “so it is. Now, then, Lena! What next? What are you going to do? Have you any home—any friends—anywhere to turn?”
“I have no friend on all God’s earth but you, sir,” said Lena drearily,“but I guess I’ll manage, somehow. I can mostly do what I set out to.”
“Your mother?” asked Bayard gently.
“She died when my baby was born, sir. She died of the shame of it. I was fifteen year old.”
“Oh!and the—the man? The father of your child?”
“He was a gentleman. He was a married man. I worked for him, in a shop.Heain’t dead. But I’d sooner go to hell than look to him.”
“I’d about as soon you would”—the minister said in his heart. But his lips answered only,—“You poor girl! You poor, poor, miserable girl!”
Then, for the first time, Lena broke down, and began to cry, there, on the streets, in the sight of every one.
“I must find you work—shelter—home—with some lady. I will do whatevercanbe done. Rely on me!” cried Bayard helplessly.
He began to realize what he had done, in undertaking Lena’s “case” without the help of a woman. Confusedly he ran over in his mind the names of the Christian women whom he knew, to whom he could turn in this emergency. He thought of Helen Carruth; but an image of the Professor’s wife, her mother, being asked to introduce Lena into the domestic machinery of a Cesarea household, half amused and half embittered him. He remembered the wife of his church treasurer, a kindly woman, trained now to doing the unexpected for Christ’s sake.
“I will speak to Mrs. Bond. I will consider the matter. Perhaps there may be some position—some form of household service,” he ventured, with the groping masculine idea that a domestic career was the only one open to a girl like Lena.
Then Lena laughed.
“Thank you, sir. But I ain’t no more fit for housework than I be for a jeweler’s trade, or floss embroidery, or a front pew in Heaven. There ain’t a lady in Christendom would put up with me. I wouldn’t like it, either,” said Lena candidly. “There’s only one thing I would like. It’s just come over me, standin’ here. I guess I’ll manage.”
“I shall wish to know,” observed Bayard anxiously, “what you are going to do, and where you will be.”
“I’ll take a room I know of,” said Lena. “It ain’t in Angel Alley. It’s a decent place. I’ll get Johnny’s mother to come along o’ me. She’s dead sick of the Widders’ Home. She’s kinder fond of me, Johnny’s mother is, and she can take in or go out, to help a bit. Then I’ll go over to the powder factory.”
“The powder factory?” echoed the puzzled pastor.
“The gunpowder factory, over to the Cut,” said Lena. “They’re kinder short of hands. It ain’t a popular business. The pay’s good, and Lord,Ishouldn’t care! The sooner I blow up, the safer I’ll be. I guess I’d like it, too. I always thought I should.”
“Very well,” said the minister helplessly.“That may answer, till we can find something better.”
It was now past twelve o’clock, and the night was growing bitterly cold. Bayard said good-night to Lena, and they separated opposite Trawl’s door.
He went shivering home, and stirred up his fire. He was cold to the heart. That discreet afterthought which is the enemy of too many of our noble decisions, tormented him. He turned to his books, and taking one which was lying open upon the study-table read:—
“He spoke much about the wrongs of women; and it is very touching to know that during the last year of his life he frequently went forth at night, and endeavored to redeem the fallen women of Brighton.”...
It was not three days from this time that Captain Hap approached the minister on the Alley, with a sober and anxious face. He held in his hand a copy of the “Windover Topsail.” His rough finger trembled as it pressed the paragraph which he handed in silence for Bayard to read:—
“We regret to learn that a certain prominent citizen of this place who has been laboring among the sailors and fishermen in a quasi-clerical capacity, is so unfortunate as to find his name associated with a most unpleasant scandal arising out of his acquaintance with the disreputable women of the district in which he labors. We wish the Reverend gentleman well out of his scrape, but may take occasion to suggest that such self-elected censors of our society and institutions must learn somehow that they cannot touch pitch and not be defiled, any more than ordinary men who do not make their pretensions to holiness.”
“Well?” said Bayard, quietly returning the paper.
Job Slip had joined them, and read the paragraph over the Captain’s shoulder. Job was white to the lips with the virile rage of a man of the sea.
“I’ve shipped here, and I’ve coasted there, and I’ve sailed eenymost around the world,” slowly said Captain Hap. “I never in my life—and I’m comin’ on seventy-five year old—I never knew no town I wouldn’t d’ruther see a scandal a-goin’ in, than this here. It’s Hell let loose on ye,” added the Captain grimly.
“Find me the fellar that put up that job!” roared Job Slip, rolling up his sleeves.
“He ain’t fur to seek,” answered the Captain with a short laugh.
“He’s the devil and all his angels smithered into one!” raved Job.
“That’s drawrin’ of it mild,” said Captain Hap.
“This—low—matter does not trouble me,” observed Bayard, smiling with genuine and beautiful remoteness.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Captain Hap;“that’s all you know!”
Captain Hap was wiser in his generation than the child of light. Before a week had gone by, Bayard found himself the victim of one of the cruelest forms of human persecution—the scandal of a provincial town.
Its full force fell suddenly upon him.
Now, this was the one thing for which he was totally unprepared; of every other kind of martyrdom, it seemed to him, he had recognized the possibility: this had never entered his mind.
He accepted it with that outward serenity which means in a man of his temperament the costliest expenditure of inward vitality, and, turning neither to the right nor to the left, kept on his way.
Averted looks avoided him upon the streets. Cold glances sought him in Angel Alley. Suspicion lurked in eyes that had always met him cordially. Hands were withdrawn that had never failed to meet his heartily. His ears quivered with comments overheard as he passed through groups upon the business streets. The more public and the more respectable the place, the worse his reception. He came quickly into the habit of avoiding, when he could, the better portions of the town.
Before he had time to determine on any givencourse of conduct, he felt himself hunted down into Angel Alley, like other outcasts.
The Reverend Mr. Fenton in this crisis did what appealed to him as a praiseworthy deed. He came down to the chapel, and, in the eyes of Angel Alley sought his classmate boldly. Give him the credit of the act; it meant more than we may readily distinguish.
Men who conform, who live like other men, who think in the accustomed channels, are not to be judged by the standard which we hold before our heroes. He held out his hand to Bayard with some unnecessary effusion.
“My dear fellow!” he murmured, “this is really—you know—I came to—express my sympathy.”
“Thank you, Fenton,” said Bayard quietly.
He said nothing more, and Fenton looked embarrassed. He had prepared himself at some length to go into the subject. He felt that Bayard’s natural indiscretion needed the check which it had probably now received, for life. But he found himself unable to say anything of the kind. The words shriveled on his tongue. His own eyes fell before Bayard’s high look. A spectator might have thought their positions to be reversed; that the clergyman was the culprit, and the slandered missionary the judge and patron. Fenton was uncomfortable, and, after a few meaningless words, he said good-morning, and turned away.
“Of course,” he observed, as he went down the long steps of the mission,“you will meet this slander by some explanation, or change of tack? You will adapt your course hereafter to the circumstances?”
“I shall explain nothing, and change nothing,” answered Bayard calmly. “I should do the same thing over again to-morrow, if I had it to do. I have committed no imprudence, and I shall stoop to no apology. I doubt if there are six civilized places in this country where an honest man in my position, doing my work, would have been subjected to the consequences which have befallen a simple deed of Christian mercy such as has been done by scores of better men than I, before me. Why, it has not even the merit—or demerit—of originality! I did not invent the salvation of the Magdalene. That dates back about two thousand years. It takes a pretty low mind to slander a man for it.”
This was the only bitter thing he was heard to say. It may be pardoned him. It silenced the Reverend Mr. Fenton, and he departed thoughtfully from Angel Alley.
As Bayard looked back upon these lonely days, when the fury of the storm which swept about his ears had subsided, as such social tornadoes do, he perceived that the thing from which he had suffered most keenly was the disapproval of his own people. Wrong him they did not, because they could not. They might as easily have smirched the name and memory of the beloved disciple. But criticise him they did, poor souls!Windover gossip, the ultimatum of their narrow lives, seemed to them to partake of the finalities of death and the judgment. The treasurer of the society was troubled.
“We must reef to the breeze! we must reef to the breeze!” he repeated mournfully. “But, my dear sir, you must allow me to say that I think it would have been better seamanship to have avoided it altogether.”
“What would you have had me do, Mr. Bond?” asked Bayard, looking rather pale. “I am sorry to disappointyou. The love and trust of my own people is all I have,” he faltered.
“Some witness, for instance,” suggested Mr. Bond. “To be sure, you did call on the police, I am told.”
“All Angel Alley was my witness,” returned Bayard, recovering his self-possession.
“Some woman, then—some lady?”
“Name the woman. I thought of summoning your wife. Should you have let her go on such an errand, on such a night, at such an hour, and under such conditions?”
“I ought to have let her go,” answered the officer of the heretic church, honestly. “I’m not sure that I should.”
He looked perplexed, but none the less troubled for that, and sighed as he shook hands with his pastor. Mrs. Bond took her husband’s arm, and walked away with him. “I would have done it, John,” she said. But she was crying; sowas Mrs. Granite. Jane’s face was white and scared. Captain Hap was very sober. Job Slip was significantly silent. Rumor had it, that a fight was brewing between Job and the Trawls. Job’s anger, if thoroughly aroused, was a serious affair. Bayard felt the discomfort and annoyance of his people acutely. He went away alone, and walked up and down the winter coast, for miles and hours, trying to regain himself in solitude and the breath of the sea. For some time he found it impossible to think coherently. A few words got the ring of his mind, and shook it:—
“From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.”
Usually in such a situation, some one trivial occurrence fixes itself upon the sore imagination of a man and galls him above all the really important aspects of his misfortune. This trifle came to Bayard in the reception of a letter from the girl herself.