“Komm beglücke mich?Komm beglücke mich!”
“Komm beglücke mich?Komm beglücke mich!”
Her voice sank, and ceased. What tenderness!What strength! What vigor and hope and joy, and—forbid the thought!—what power of loving, the woman had!
“Some lucky fellow will know, some day,” thought the devotee. Aloud, he said nothing at all. Helen’s hands lay on the keys; she, too, sat silent. It was beginning to grow dark in the cottage parlor. The long, lace curtain blew straight in, and towards her; as it dropped, it fell about her head and shoulders, and caught there; it hung like a veil; in the dim light it looked like—
She started to her feet and tossed it away.
“Oh!” he breathed, “why not let it stay? Just for a minute! It did nobody any harm.”
“I am not so sure of that,” thought Helen. But what she said, was,—
“I will light the candles.”
He sprang to help her; the sleeve of her muslin dress fell away from her arm as she lifted the little flicker of the match to the tall brass candlestick on the mantel. He took the match from her, and touched the candle. In the dusk they looked at each other with a kind of fear. Bayard was very pale.
Helen had her rich, warm look. She appeared taller than usual, and seemed to stand more steadily on her feet than other women.
“Do you want me to thank you?” asked Bayard in a low voice.
“No,” said Helen.
“I must go,” he said abruptly.
“Mother will be back,” observed Helen, not at her ease. “And Father will be getting on with the Unforgiven, and come home any minute.”
“Very well,” replied Bayard, seating himself.
“Not that I would keep you!” suggested Helen suddenly.
He smiled a little sadly, and this time unexpectedly rose again.
“I don’t expect you to understand, of course. But I really ought to go. And I am going.”
“Very well,” said Helen stiffly, in her turn.
“I have a—something to write, you see,” explained Bayard.
“You don’t call it a sermon any more, do you? Heresy writes a ‘something.’ How delicious! Do go and write it, by all means. I hope the Unforgiven will appreciate it.”
“You are not a dull woman,” observed Bayard uncomfortably. “You don’t for an instant suppose Iwantto go?”
Helen raised her thick, white eyelids slowly; a narrow, guarded light shone underneath them. She only answered that she supposed nothing about it.
“If I stay,” suggested Bayard, with a wavering look, “will you sing The Serenade to me—all over again?”
“Not one bar of it!” replied Helen promptly.
“You are the wiser of us two,” said Bayard after a pause.
The tide was coming in, and gained upon the reef just outside the cottage windows, with a soft, inexorable sound.
“I am not a free man,” he added.
“Return to your chains and your cell,” suggested Helen. “It is—as you say—the better way.”
“I said nothing of the kind! Pardon me.”
“Didn’t you? It does not signify. It doesn’t often signify what peoplesay—do you think?”
“Are you coming to see my people—the work? You said you would, you know. Shall I call and take you, some day?”
“Do you think it matters—to the drunkards?”
“Oh, well,” said Bayard, looking disappointed, “never mind.”
“But I do mind,” returned Helen, in her full, boylike voice. “I want to come. And I’m coming. I had rather come, though, than be taken. I’ll turn up some day in the anxious seat when you don’t expect me. I’ll wear a veil, and an old poke bonnet—yes, and a blanket shawl—and confess. I defy you to find me out!”
“Miss Carruth,” said the young preacher with imperiousness, “my work is not a parlor charade.”
Helen looked at him. Defiance and deference battled in her brown eyes; for that instant, possibly, she could have hated or loved him with equal ease; she felt his spiritual superiority to herself as something midway between an antagonism and an attraction, but exasperating whichever wayshe looked at it. She struggled with herself, but made no reply.
“If I am honored with your presence,” continued Bayard, still with some decision of manner, “I shall count upon your sympathy.... God knows I need it!” he added in a different tone.
“And you shall have it,” said Helen softly.
It was too dark to see the melting of her face; but he knew it was there. They stood on the piazza of the cottage in the strong, salt wind. Her muslin dress blew back. The dim light of the candle within scarcely defined her figure. They seemed to stand like creatures of the dusk, uncertain of each other or of themselves. He held out his hand; she placed her own within it cordially. How warm and womanly, how strong and fine a touch she had! He bade her good-night, and hurried away.
That “something” which is to supersede the sermon was not written that night. Bayard found himself unable to work. He sat doggedly at his desk for an hour, then gave it up, put out his light, and seized his hat again. He went down to the beach and skirted the shore, taking the spray in his face. His brain was on fire; not with intellectual labor. His heart throbbed; not with anxiety for the fishing population. He reached a reef whence he could see the Mainsail Hotel, and there sat down to collect himself. The cottage was lighted now; the parlor windows glimmered softly; the long, lace curtains were blowing in andout. Shadows of figures passed and repassed. The Professor had settled the state of the Unforgiven, and had come back from the clam study; he paced to and fro across the parlor of the Flying Jib; a graceful figure clung to his theologic arm, and kept step with him as he strode.
Presently she came to the low window, and pushed back the lace curtain, which had blown in, half across the little parlor. She lifted her arms, and shut the window.
The waves beat the feet of the cliff monotonously; like the bars of a rude, large music which no man had been able to read. Bayard listened to them with his head thrown back on the hard rock, and his hat over his eyes. Even the gaze of the stars seemed intrusive, curious, one might say impertinent, to him. He desired the shell of the mollusk that burrowed in the cleft of the cliff.
The tide was rising steadily. The harbor wore its full look; it seemed about to overflow, like a surcharged heart. The waves rose on; they took definite rhythm. All the oldest, sweetest meanings of music—the maddest and the tenderest cries of human longing—were in the strain:—
“Komm beglücke mich?Beglücke mich!”
Those mighty lovers, the sea and the shore, urged and answered, resisted and yielded, protested and pleaded, retreated and met, loved and clasped, and slept. When the tide came to the full, the wind went down.
Dear Mr. Bayard,—I have been thinking since I saw you. I have health, and a summer. What can I do to help your work? I haven’t a particle of experience, and not much enthusiasm. But I am ready to try, if you are willing to try me. I don’t think I’m adapted to drunkards. I don’t know which of us would be more scared. He would probably run for the nearest grogshop to get rid of me. Aren’t there some old ladies who bother you to death, whom you could turn over to me?Yours sincerely,Helen Carruth.
Dear Mr. Bayard,—I have been thinking since I saw you. I have health, and a summer. What can I do to help your work? I haven’t a particle of experience, and not much enthusiasm. But I am ready to try, if you are willing to try me. I don’t think I’m adapted to drunkards. I don’t know which of us would be more scared. He would probably run for the nearest grogshop to get rid of me. Aren’t there some old ladies who bother you to death, whom you could turn over to me?
Yours sincerely,
Helen Carruth.
This characteristic note, the first that he had ever received from her, reached Bayard by mail, a few days after his call at the cottage of the Flying Jib.
He sat down and wrote at once:—
My dear Miss Carruth,—There is an old lady. She doesn’t bother me at all, but I am at my wits’ end with her. She runs away from the institution where she belongs, and there’s no other place for her. At present she is inflicting herself on Mrs. Job Slip, No. 143 Thoroughfare Street, opposite the head of Angel Alley. Her mind isthought to be slightly disordered by the loss of her son, drowned last winter in the wreck of the Clara Em. Mrs. Slip will explain the circumstances to you more fully. Inquire for Johnny’s mother. If the old woman ever had any other name, people have forgotten it, now. I write in great haste and stress of care. It will not be necessary to traverse Angel Alley to reach this address, which is quite in the heart of the town, and perfectly safe and suitable for you. I thank you very much.Yours sincerely,Emanuel Bayard.
My dear Miss Carruth,—There is an old lady. She doesn’t bother me at all, but I am at my wits’ end with her. She runs away from the institution where she belongs, and there’s no other place for her. At present she is inflicting herself on Mrs. Job Slip, No. 143 Thoroughfare Street, opposite the head of Angel Alley. Her mind isthought to be slightly disordered by the loss of her son, drowned last winter in the wreck of the Clara Em. Mrs. Slip will explain the circumstances to you more fully. Inquire for Johnny’s mother. If the old woman ever had any other name, people have forgotten it, now. I write in great haste and stress of care. It will not be necessary to traverse Angel Alley to reach this address, which is quite in the heart of the town, and perfectly safe and suitable for you. I thank you very much.
Yours sincerely,
Emanuel Bayard.
Helen frowned a little when she read this. No Bishop of a diocese, dictating the career of a deaconess, no village rector, guiding some anxious and aimless visiting young lady through the mild dissipations of parish benevolence, could have returned a more business-like, calm, even curt, reply.
The position of a man who may not love a woman and must not invite her to marry him—or, to put it a little differently, who must not love and cannot marry—is one which it seems to be asking too much of women to understand. At all events they seldom or never do. The withdrawals, the feints, the veils and chills and silences, by which a woman in a similar position protects herself, may be as transparent as golden mist to him whom she evades; but the sturdy retreat of a masculine conscience from a too tender or too tempting situationis as opaque as a gravestone to the feminine perception.
Accustomed to be eagerly wooed, Helen did not know what to make of this devotee who did not urge himself even upon her friendship. She had never given any man that treasure before. Like all high-minded women who have not spent themselves in experiments of the sensibilities, Helen regarded her own friendship as valuable. She would have preferred him to show, at least, that he appreciated his privilege. She would have liked him to make friendship as devotedly as those other men had made love to her.
His reserve, his distance, his apparent moodiness, and undoubted ability to live without seeing her except when he got ready to do so, gave her a perplexed trouble more important than pique.
Without ado or delay, she took the next electric car for Mrs. Slip’s.
Bayard received that afternoon, by the familiar hand of Joey Slip, this brief rejoinder:—
Dear Mr. Bayard,—This experienced boy seems to be on intimate terms with you, and offers to take my report, which stands thus: Johnny’s mother is in the Widows’ Home. Shall I write you details?Truly yours,H. C.
Dear Mr. Bayard,—This experienced boy seems to be on intimate terms with you, and offers to take my report, which stands thus: Johnny’s mother is in the Widows’ Home. Shall I write you details?
Truly yours,
H. C.
“Run on down to the Mainsail Hotel, Joey,” said the minister, writing rapidly.“Find the lady—there will be a good many ladies—and hand her this.”
“Pooh!” retorted this nautical child with a superior air, “Vat ain’t nuffin! She’s good-lookin’ nuff to find off Zheorges in a fog-bank.”
Thus ran the note:—
Dear Miss Carruth,—I will call for the report to-morrow. Thank you.Yours,E. B.
Dear Miss Carruth,—I will call for the report to-morrow. Thank you.
Yours,
E. B.
When Bayard reached her mother’s piazza the next evening, Helen was in the middle of the harbor.
“My daughter is considered a good oarswoman, I believe,” said the Professor with a troubled look. “I know nothing about these matters myself. I confess I wish I did. I have not felt easy about her; she has propelled the craft so far into the stream. I am delighted to see you, Mr. Bayard! I will put another boat at your service—that is—I suppose you understand the use of oars?”
“Better than I do Verbal Inspiration, Professor!” replied Bayard, laughing. “She is rather far out, and the tide has turned.”
He ran down the pier, and leaped into the first boat that he could secure. It happened to be a dory.
“Can you overtake her?” asked her father with a keen look.
“I can try,” replied the young man, smiling.
The Professor heaved a sigh, whether of relief or of anxiety it would not be easy to say, and stood upon the pier watching Bayard’s fine stroke. Mrs. Carruth came clucking anxiously down, and put her hand upon her husband’s arm. Bayard looked at the two elderly people with a strange affectionateness which he did not analyze; feeling, but not acknowledging, a sudden heart-ache for ties which he had never known.
The sun was sinking, and the harbor was a sea of fire. A sea of glass it was not, for there was some wind and more tide. Really, she should not have ventured out so far. He looked over his shoulder as he gained upon her. She had not seen him, and was drifting out. Her oars lay crossed upon her lap. Her eyes were on the sky, which flung out gold and violet, crimson and pale green flame, in bars like the colors of a mighty banner. The harbor took the magnificence, and lifted it upon the hands of the short, uneasy waves.
The two little boats, the pursuing and the pursued, floated in one of those rare and unreal splendors which make this world, for the moment, seem a glorious, painless star, and the chance to live in it an ecstasy.
By the island, half a mile back, perhaps, Jane Granite in a dory rowed by the younger Trawl, silently watched the minister moving with strong strokes across the blazing harbor. Drifting out,with beautiful pose and crossed hands, was the absorbed, unconscious woman whom his racing oars chased down.
Between the glory of the water and the glory of the sky, he gained upon her, overtook her, headed her off, and brought up with a spurt beside her. Jane saw that the minister laid his hand imperiously upon the gunwale of the lady’s boat; and, it seemed, without waiting for her consent, or even lingering to ask for it, he crept into the cockle-shell, and fastened the painter of his dory to the stern. Now, between the color of the sky and the color of the sea, the two were seen to float for a melting moment—
“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran.”
“Ben,” said Jane, “let us put about, will you? I’m a little chilly.”
“Ben?” said Jane again, as they rowed under the dark shadow of the island. “Ben?” with a little loyal effort to make conversation such as lovers know, “did you ever read a poem called Kubla Khan?”
“I hain’t had time to read sence I left the grammar school,” said Ben.
“What’s up with you, anyhow?” he added, after a moment’s sullen reflection.
He looked darkly over Jane’s head towards the harbor’s mouth. At that moment Bayard was tying the painter of the dory to the stern of the shell. Jane did not look back. A slight grayness settledabout her mouth; she had the protruding mouth and evident cheek-bones of the consumptive woman of the coast.
“D—— him!” said Ben Trawl.
Bayard had indeed crossed into Helen’s boat without so much as saying, By your leave. Her eyes had a dangerous expression, to which he paid no sort of attention.
“Didn’t you know better than to take this shell—so far—with the tide setting out?” he demanded. “Give me those oars!”
“I understand how to manage a boat,” replied the young lady coldly. She did not move.
“Give me those oars!” thundered Bayard.
She looked at him, and gave them.
“Don’t try to move,” he said in a softer voice. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to upset these toys. If you had taken a respectable ocean dory—I can’t see why they don’t provide them at the floats,” he complained, with the nervousness of an uneasy man. “I can manage perfectly where I am. Sit still, Miss Carruth!”
She did not look at him this time, but she sat still. He put about, and rowed steadily. For a few moments they did not exchange a word. Helen had an offended expression. She trailed her hand in the water with something like petulance. Bayard did not watch her.
Captain Hap crossed their course, rowing home in an old green dory full of small bait—pollockand tinkers. He eyed Bayard’s Harvard stroke with surprised admiration. He had seldom seen a person row like that. But he was too old a sailor to say so. As the minister swerved dexterously to starboard to free the painter of his tender from collision with the fisherman, Captain Hap gave utterance to but two words. These were:—
“Short chops!”
“Quite a sea, yes!” called Bayard cheerily.
Captain Hap scanned the keel-boat, the passenger, and the dory in tow, with discrimination.
“Lady shipwrecked?” he yelled, after some reflection.
“No, sir,” answered Helen, smiling in spite of herself; “captured by pirates.”
“Teach ye bet-ter!” howled Captain Hap. “Hadn’t oughter set out in short cho-ops! Hadn’t oughter set out in a craft like that nohow! They palm off them eggshells on boarders for bo-o-oats!”
Helen laughed outright; her eyes met Bayard’s merrily, and, if he had dared to think so, rather humbly.
“I was very angry with you,” she said.
“I can’t help that,” replied Bayard. “Your father and mother were very anxious about you.”
“Really?”
“Naturally. I was a chartered pirate, at any rate.”
“But I was in no sort of danger, you know. You’ve made a great fuss over nothing.”
“Take these oars,” observed Bayard. “Just let me see you row back to the float.”
Helen took the oars, and pulled a few strokes strongly enough. The veins stood out on her soft forehead, and her breath came hard.
“I had no idea the tide was so strong to-night. The wind seems to be the wrong way, too,” she panted.
“It was blowing you straight out to sea,” observed Bayard quietly.
“Shall I take the oars?” he added.
She pulled on doggedly for a few moments. Suddenly she flung them down.
“Why, we are not making any headway at all! We are twisting about, and—going out again.”
“Certainly.”
“It is that heavy dory! You can’t expect me to row two boats at once.”
“The dory does make some difference. But very little. See—she doesn’t draw a teaspoonful of water. Shall I take the oars?”
“If you please,” said Helen meekly.
She gave them up without looking at him, and she was a trifle pale from her exertion. Her hat was off, and the wind made rich havoc of her pretty hair. She was splashed with spray, and her boating-dress was quite wet. Bayard watched her. The sun dropped, and the color on the harbor began to fade.
“I suppose you came for the report?” she asked suddenly.“I stayed in all the afternoon. I couldn’t be expected to wait indefinitely, you know!”
“I could not possibly set the hour. I am much overworked. I should beg your pardon,” said Bayard in his gentlest way.
“Youareoverworked,” answered Helen, in her candid voice. “And I am an idle, useless woman. It wouldn’t have hurt me a bit to wait your leisure. But I’m not— ... you see ... I’m not used to it.”
“I must remind you again, that I no longer move in good society,” said Bayard, looking straight at her. “You must extend to me as much tolerance as you do to other working men.”
“Yes,” returned Helen; “we always wait a week for a carpenter, and ten days for the plumbers. Anyhow, Johnny’s mother is in the Widows’ Home. She’s as snug as a clam in a shell. She says she won’t run away again till I’ve been to see her.”
“How in the world did you manage?” asked Bayard admiringly.
“Oh, I don’t just know,” replied Helen, clasping her hands behind her head; “I made myself lovely, that’s all.”
“That might be enough, I should fancy,” ventured the young man under his breath.
“I took her shopping,” said Helen.
“Took hershopping!”
“Why, yes. She wanted to buy some mourning. She said Johnny’s father had been dead so long, her black was all worn out. She wanted fresh crape. So I took her round the stores, and got her some.”
“Bought her crape?”
“Yes. I got her a crape veil—oh, and a bonnet. She’s the happiest mourner you ever saw. She went back to the Widows’ Home like a spring lamb. She wore a chocolate calico dress with red spots on it, and this crape veil. You can’t think how she looked! But she’s perfectly contented. She’ll stay awhile now. She says they wouldn’t give her any mourning at the Home. She said that was all she had ‘agin’ ’em.’”
“Oh, these widows!” groaned Bayard. “We got two starving women in there by the hardest work, last spring, and one left in a week. She said it was too lonesome; she wanted to live with folks. The other one said it ‘depressed’ her. A Windover widow is a problem in sociology.”
“Johnny’s mother is the other kind of woman; I can see that,” replied Helen. “She sits by herself, and puts her face in her hands. She doesn’t even cry. But she takes it out in crape. You can’t think how happy she is in that veil.”
“Your political economy is horrible,” laughed Bayard, “but your heart is as warm as”—
“I saw Mari and Joey,” interrupted Helen,“and Job Slip. I stayed two hours. Job was as sober as you are. They invited me to dinner. I suppose they were thankful to be rid of that poor old lady.”
“Did you stay?”
“Of course I did. We had pork gravy, and potatoes—oh, and fried cunners. I sat beside Joey. I believe that child is as old as She. He’s a reincarnation of some drowned ancestor who went fishing ages ago, and never came back. Did you ever notice his resemblance to a mackerel?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in that light. I see now what it was. It takes you to discover it!”
“Johnny’s mother looks like a cod, poor thing!” continued Helen. “I don’t wonder. I should think she would. I’m sure I should in her place.”
“You are incorrigible!” said Bayard, laughing in spite of himself. “And yet—you’ve done a better morning’s work than anybody in Windover has done here for a month!”
“I’m going to take tea with Johnny’s mother next week,” observed Helen—“at the Widows’ Home, you know. But I’ve promised to take Joey to the circus first.”
“You are perfectly refreshing!” sighed Bayard delightedly.
“Mr. Bayard,” said Helen, with a change of manner as marked yet as subtle as the motion of the wave that fell to make way for the next, against the bobbing bows of the empty dory, “I had a long talk with Job Slip.”
“You say you found him sober?”
“As sober as a Cesarea trustee. But the way that man feels to you is something you haven’t an idea of. I thought of that verse, you know, about love ‘passing the love of women.’ It is infatuation. It is worship. It is enough to choke you. Why, I cried when I heard him talk! And I don’t cry, you know, very often. And I’m not ashamed to own it, either. It made me feel ashamed to be alive—in such a world—why, Mr. Bayard!” Helen unclasped her hands from the back of her head, and thrust them out towards him, as if they were an argument.
“Why, I thought this earth was a pleasant place! I thought life was a delightful thing!... If the rest of it is like this town—Windover is a world of woe, and you are one of the sons of God to these unhappy people!”
She said this solemnly, more solemnly than he had ever heard her say anything before. He laid down his oars, and took off his hat. He could not answer, and he did not try.
She saw how much moved he was, and she made a little gesture, as if she tossed something that weighed heavily, away.
“You see,” she interposed,“I’ve never done this kind of thing. I’m not a good Professor’s daughter. I didn’t like it. I went through an attack of the missionary spirit when I was fifteen, and had a Sunday-school class—ten big boys; all red, and eight of them freckled. We were naming classes one Sunday, and my boys whistled ‘Yankee Doodle’ when the superintendent prayed, and then asked if they might be called the lilies of the valley. I told them they weren’t fit to be called red sorrel. So after that I gave them up. I’ve never tried it since. I’m of no more use in the world—in thisawfulworld—than the artificial pansies on my hat.”
Helen picked up her straw hat from the bottom of the boat, and tied it on her head, with a little sound that was neither a laugh nor a sigh.
It was growing dark, fast. They were nearly at the float, now. Bayard laid down his oars. The headlights were leaping out all over the harbor. The wind had gone down with the sun. Boats crept in like tired people, through the sudden calm, to anchor for the night. The evening steamer came in from the city, and the long waves of her wake rolled upon the beach, and tossed the little boats. The sea drew a few long, deep breaths.
“The trouble with me, you see,” said Helen, “is just what I told you. I am not spiritual.”
“You are something better—you are altogether womanly!” said the young preacher quickly.
He seized his oars, and rowed in, as if they were shipwrecked. The old clam-digger was hauling his lobster-pots straight across their course. As Bayard veered to avoid him, he could be heard singing:—
“The woman’s ashore,The child’s at the door,The man’s at the wheel.“Storm on the track,Fog at the back,Death at the keel.“You, mate, or me—Which shall it be?”—
“The woman’s ashore,The child’s at the door,The man’s at the wheel.
“Storm on the track,Fog at the back,Death at the keel.
“You, mate, or me—Which shall it be?”—
The old clam-digger stopped, when he saw the lady in the boat. It was now quite dark. Bayard and Helen were the last people to land at the float. He gave her his hand in silence. She stood by, while he helped the keeper of the float up with the two boats. He coughed a little as he did so, and she said, rather sharply:—
“Tim! you should keep two men here, to do that work.”
Tim apologized, grumbling, and the two walked on up the pier together; still alone. At the door of the cottage, she asked him, rather timidly, if he would come in. But he excused himself, and hurried away.
When he found himself far from the hotel, and well on the way to his lodgings, Bayard drew the long breath of a man who is escaping danger. He experienced a kind of ecstatic terror. He thought of her—he thought of her till he could think no more, but fell into an ocean of feeling, tossing and deep. It seemed to have no soundings. He drowned himself in it with a perilous delight.
What would a lonely fate be, if a woman capable of understanding the highest, and serving it, capacious for tenderness, and yielding it, a womanwarm, human, sweet, and as true as one’s belief in her, should pour the precious current of her love into a long life’s work? Why, a man would be a god! He would climb the inaccessible. He would achieve the undreamed and the unknown. He would not know where consecration ended, and where heaven began.
“He would be a freer man than I am,” thought Bayard, as he passed, between the larkspurs and the feverfew, up Mrs. Granite’s garden.
Mrs. Granite met him at the door; she held a kerosene lamp high in one hand; with the other she handed to him a soiled and crumpled bit of paper.
“A boy left it here, sir, not ten minutes ago, and he said you was to read it as soon as you came home. I don’t know the boy. I never saw him before, but it seemed to be something quite partikkelar.”
Bayard held the message to the lamp and read:—
A pore man in distres would take it kindly of the minester to mete him as sune as possibel to-nite to Ragged Rock. i am a miserbul Drunkhard and i want to Knock Off. i heer when folks talk with you they stop Drinkin. i wish youde talk to me so I would stopYoursJack Haddock.
A pore man in distres would take it kindly of the minester to mete him as sune as possibel to-nite to Ragged Rock. i am a miserbul Drunkhard and i want to Knock Off. i heer when folks talk with you they stop Drinkin. i wish youde talk to me so I would stop
Yours
Jack Haddock.
Bayard re-read this message thoughtfully. He could hardly have told why it perplexed him. Up and down the shores and streets of Windover no cry of misery or of guilt had ever yet lifted itself to him in vain. Such appeals were common enough. Often it would happen that a stranger would stop him in the street, and use much the same naïve language: “I hear when you talk to folks they stop drinking. I wish you’d talk to me.” Contrary to his custom in such matters, he showed this slip of paper to Mrs. Granite.
“Mr. Bayard, sir,” she said, with that prompt feminine fear which sometimes takes the place of reliable good sense, “don’t you go a step!”
Bayard did not reply. He turned away musing, and paced up and down between the larkspurs. True, the place was lonely, and the hour late. But the vagaries of disgraced men are many, and nothing was more possible than that some fisherman, not wholly sober, and not half drunk, should take it into his befuddled brain that an interview with the minister located at a safe distance from nagging wife, crying child, or jeering messmate, or, let us say, far removed from the jaws of Trawl’s door, should work the magic or the miraclefor which the morally defective are always waiting.
“I see no reason why I should not comply with this request,” he said decidedly.
“Mr. Bayard, sir,” urged Mrs. Granite, “it’s a thing I don’t like to be her who tells you, but it’s time somebody did. There’s them in this town wouldn’t stop at nothing, they have that feeling to you.”
“Tome?” cried Bayard, opening his hazel eyes as wide as a child’s.
“Rum done it,” stammered Mrs. Granite, instinctively using the three familiar words which most concisely covered the ground. “It’s your temperance principles. They ain’t pop’lar. They affect your standing in this community.”
This was the accepted phrase in Windover for all such cases made and provided. It was understood to contain the acme of personal peril or disgrace. To talk to a man about “your standing in this community” was equivalent to an insult or a scandal. Poor Mrs. Granite, an affectionate and helpless parrot, reëchoed this terrible language, and trembled. She felt as if she had said to the minister, Your social ruin is complete for all time, throughout the civilized world.
“Not that it makes any difference tous,” sobbed Mrs. Granite;“we set just as much by you. But your standing is affected in this community. There’s them that hates you, sir, more shame to ’em, more’n the Old Boy himself. Mr. Bayard, Mr. Bayard, don’t you go to Ragged Rock alone, sir, this time o’ night to meet no tom-fool of a drunkard anxious about his soul. He don’t own such a thing to his name! All he’s got is a rum-soaked sponge, he’s mopped up whiskey with all his born days!”
“Your drinks (if not your metaphors) are getting a little mixed, dear Mrs. Granite,” laughed Bayard.
“Sir?” said Mrs. Granite.
“But still I must say, there is some sense in your view of the case—Ah, here’s Jane; and Ben with her. We’ll put the case to—No. I have it. Mrs. Granite, to please you, I will take Ben Trawl along with me. Will that set you at rest?—Here, Trawl. Just read this message, will you? Something about it looks a little queer, and Mrs. Granite is so kind as to worry about me. What do you make of it?”
“Oh, you’ve got home so soon, have you?” said Trawl rather sullenly.
In the evening his eyebrows met more heavily than ever across his forehead; they looked as if they had been corked for some ugly masquerade. He glanced from under them, coldly, at the minister; read the note, and was about to tear it into strips.
“I’ll take it, thank you,” said Bayard quietly, holding out his hand.
“Mr. Bayard,” said Jane, who had not spoken before,“I hope you will pay no attention to this message.”
She spoke in a voice so low as to be almost inarticulate.
“Oh, I’ll go with him, if he’s afraid,” said Trawl, with that accent which falls just so far short of a sneer that a man may not decently notice it.
“I incline to think it is wise to take a witness to this adventure,” replied Bayard serenely. “But I need not trouble you, Mr. Trawl. Pray don’t exert yourself to oblige me.”
“It’s no exertion,” said Ben, with a change of tone. “Come along!”
He strode out into the street and Bayard, after a moment’s hesitation, did the same, shutting the garden gate behind him. Jane Granite opened it, and followed them for a little way; she seemed perplexed and distressed; she did not speak, but trotted silently, like a dog, in the dark.
“Go back!” said Trawl, stopping short. Jane slunk against a fence, and stopped.
“Go back, I say!” cried Trawl.
“It is natural that she should want to come. She feels anxious about you,” observed Bayard kindly.
“Go back to your mother, and stay there!” commanded Trawl, stamping his foot.
Jane turned and obeyed, and vanished. The two men walked on in silence. They came quickly through the village and down the Point, turning thence to cross the downs that raised their round shoulders, an irregular gray outline against the sky. Bayard glanced back. It looked black anddesolate enough ahead of him. Below and behind him the life of the summer-seekers stirred softly, like the figures in a gay game, or old-fashioned walking-dance. The hotels blazed cheerfully; the piazzas were full and merry; in the parlors people were playing and singing. He could not see the lights of the Flying Jib from where he stood; this disappointed him, and he walked on. The music from the Mainsail piano followed him. There was a parlor concert—a woman’s voice—a soprano solo—ah! The great serenade!
“Komm, beglücke mich!”
The strain seemed to chase him, like a cry, like an entreaty, almost like a sob. His heart leaped, as if soft arms had been thrown around him. He stopped and listened, till the song had ceased.
“That is good music,” he said aloud, not knowing what he said, but oppressed by the dogged silence which his escort maintained.
“Good enough,” said Ben roughly. The two walked on, and neither said anything more. It was now quite dark and still around them. The rough, broken surface of the rocky downs made traveling difficult; but both men were familiar with the way, and lost no time upon it. The sky was cloudy, and the sea was dark. The ebbing tide met the deserted beach with a sigh. The headlights in the harbor looked far off, and of the town not a glimmer could be seen. Ben strode on in sullen silence. Bayard watched him with somediscomfort, but nothing like a sensation of fear had yet reached his nerves.
“This fellow chose a lonely place for a pastoral visit,” he observed at length, as they approached the little beach made memorable by the wreck of the Clara Em.
“Wanted to stump you,” said Ben, with an unpleasant laugh. “Wanted to dare you, you know—to see if you’d show game. It’s a way they have, these toughs who meddle with parsons. They like to make out a big story, and tell it round the saloons. Probably the whole thing’s a put-up job.”
“That is more than possible, of course. But I’d rather investigate three put-up jobs than neglect one real need of one miserable man. That is my business, you see, Ben. Yours is to ruin people. Mine is to save them. We each attend to our own affairs, that’s all.”
“D—— you!” cried Ben, suddenly facing about. “That’s just it! You don’t attend to your own affairs! You meddle with mine, and that’s what’s the matter! I’ll teach you to mind your own business!”
Before Bayard could cry out or move, he felt the other’s hands at his throat.
Bayard stood so still—with the composure of a man not without athletic training, determined to waste no strength in useless struggle—that Trawl instinctively loosened his clutch. Was the minister strangling? This was not Ben’s immediate purpose. His fingers relaxed.
“Ah,” said Bayard quietly, “so you are Jack Haddock.”
“I wrote that note. You might have known it if you hadn’t been a —— fool.”
“I might have known it—yes; I see. But I took you for a decent fellow. I couldn’t be expected to suspect you were—what you are. Well, Mr. Trawl, perhaps you will explain your business with me in some less uncomfortable manner.”
He shook Ben off with a strong thrust, and folded his arms.
“Come,” he said. “Out with it!”
“My game’s up,” replied Ben between his teeth. “I can’t do what I set out to, now. There’s too many witnesses in the case.”
“You meant to push me off Ragged Rock, perhaps?” asked Bayard quietly.“I hadn’t thought of that. But I see—it would not have been difficult. A man can be taken unawares in the dark, and as you say, there would have been no witnesses.”
“You come home too soon,” growled Ben. “I counted on getting away and bein’ here to welcome you, and nobody the wiser; d—— them two women! I supposed you’d stay awhile with your girl. A man would, in our kind of folks. Lord! you don’t seem to belong toanykind of folks that I can see. I don’t know what to make of you. —— you! —— you! —— you! I’d like to see you go yellin’ and bub—ble—in’ down to your drownin’! I’m heavier’n you be, come to the tug. I could do it now, inside of ten minutes.”
“And hang for it in ten months,” observed Bayard, smiling.
“I could get a dozen men to swear to an alibi!” cried Trawl. “You ain’t so popular in this town as to make that a hard job. You’ve got the whole liquor interest ag’in’ you. Lord! the churches would back ’em, too, that’s the joke of it!”
He laughed savagely.
Bayard made no reply. He had winced in the dark at the words. They were worse than the grip at his throat.
“When you get ready, Ben, suppose you explain what you have against me?” he suggested, after an uncomfortable pause.
“You’ve took my girl!” roared Ben.
“Your girl?Yourgirl?”
Bayard gasped, from the sheer intellectual shock of the idea.
“You’ve made love to her, behind my back! You’ve turned her head! She ain’t no eyes left in her for anybody but you, —— you! And I’ve ben keepin’ company with her for four years. You’ve got my girl away from me, and you’d oughter drown for it. Drownin’ ’s too good for you!”
“Look here, Ben,” said Bayard. “Are you drunk?”
“We don’t drink—me, nor my father. And you know it. We ain’t such —— fools!”
“It is a waste of the English language to add,” observed the preacher, with an accession of his natural dignity, which was not without its effect upon Ben Trawl, “that I have never regarded Miss Granite—for a moment—in the extraordinary light which you suggest. It seems to me unnecessary to point out to you the unnaturalness—I may be frank, and say the impossibility—of such a supposition.”
“—— you!” raved Ben, “ain’t she good enough for you, then?”
“Ben Trawl,” said the minister imperiously, “this nonsense has gone far enough. If you have nothing more reasonable to say to me, we may as well stop talking, for I’m going home. If you have, I’ll stay and hear it out.”
Bayard calmly seated himself upon the base of Ragged Rock, and took off his hat.
“What a warm, pleasant night it is!” he said in a tone so changed that Ben Trawl stared.
“Plucky, anyhow,” thought Ben. But he said:“I ain’t got half through yet. I’ve got another score ag’in’ you. You’ve took the girl, and now you’re takin’ the business.”
“Ah,” replied the preacher; “that’s another matter.”
“You own up to it, do you? —— you!”
“Assuredly,” answered Bayard. “I am doing my best to ruin your business. It is a pleasure to hear you admit it. It has gone further than I supposed.”
“Ithasgone further ’n you suppose!” echoed Ben malignantly, “and itwillgo further ’n you suppose! Me and Father have stood it long enough. There’s them that backs us that you never give one of your —— holy thoughts to. I give you warning on the spot, Mr. Bayard. You stop just where you be. Meddle with our business one inch further, and you’ll hear from the whole liquor interest of Windover. We’ll blow you into eternity if you don’t let us alone.”
“I should count that,” replied the preacher gently, “the greatest honor of my life.”
“Anyhow,” said Ben in a calmer tone, “if you don’t let our business be, we’ll ruin yourn.”
“That is quite possible,” returned Bayard; “but it won’t be without a big tussle.”
“You don’t believe me,” sneered Ben; “you think we ain’t up to it.”
“Do you suppose, Ben,” asked the preacher quietly,“that an educated man would deliberately choose the course that I have chosen to pursue in this town without informing himself on all branches of the subject that he is handling? Do you suppose I don’t know what the liquor interest is capable of when attacked by Christian temperance? There hasn’t been an outrage, a persecution, a crime,—no, not a murder committed in the name of rum and the devil against the cause of decency and sobriety in this country for years, that I haven’t traced its history out, and kept the record of it. Come up to my study, and see the correspondence and clippings I have collected on this matter. There are two shelves full, Ben.”
“Lord!” said Ben. His jaw dropped a little. He felt the inferiority of the ignorant man before education, the weakness of moral debility before moral vigor. He turned and took a few steps towards the town. The minister followed him amiably, and the two strode on in silence.
“He don’t scare worth a cent,” thought Ben. Aloud he said:—
“So you’re goin’ to fight us, be you?”
“Till I die,” answered Bayard solemnly; “and if I die!”
“You won’t take no warnin’ then?” asked Ben with a puzzled air.
“Neither from you, Ben, nor from any other man.”
“The worse for you, then!” returned Ben in an ugly tone.
“I’ll risk it,” replied Bayard serenely.
“There’s them that says you’re goin’ to fight it out at the polls,” said Ben, more sullenly nowthan savagely. “Folks says you’re goin’ to get away Father’s license.”
“I hadn’t thought of it till this minute!” exclaimed the preacher. “But it would be a good idea.”
Ben made an inarticulate noise in his throat. Bayard instinctively thrust out his elbow; he thought for the moment that Ben would spring upon him out of sheer rage. They were out on the open downs, now; but still only the witness of the sky and sea and rocks remained to help him.
“Look here,” said Ben, suddenly stopping. “Are you going to tell of me?”
“That you were so uncivil as to put your hands on my throat, Ben?—I haven’t decided.”
“Not thatIcare a ——!” muttered Ben. “But Jane”—
“I shall never mention any circumstance of this—rather unpleasant evening—which would bring Miss Granite’s name into publicity,” replied the preacher quickly. “She is a good, modest girl. She should be sheltered and cared for. You might better toss a woman off Ragged Rock—as you intended to do by me—than to turn the gossip of Windover loose upon her.”
“Itisa hell of a town, if you come to that,” said Ben with calm conviction.
“She is much too good for you, Ben Trawl,” remarked Bayard quite politely, as if he were offering the other a glass of lemonade.
“Lord!” groaned Ben, writhing under the minister’s manner. “Don’t you suppose that’s the worst on’t?”
“I think I’ll cut across here towards the hotel,” observed Bayard pleasantly. “We seem to have talked out, for this time. Good-night, Ben.”
“Say,” said Ben, “why don’t you spout temperance to me? Why ain’t you talked religion? Why ain’t you set out to convert me? I give you chance enough!”
“You are an intelligent man,” replied the preacher; “you know what you are about. I don’t waste sacred powder on useless shot.”
“Queer Dick, you,” mused Ben. “It’s just as I said. You don’t belong toanykind of folks I ever see before. I can’t make you out.”
“Next time you want to murder me, Ben,” called the minister cheerily, “don’t try anonymous traps! Show up like a man, and have it out in the open air!”
He walked on towards the beach. Ben watched him for a perplexed and sullen moment, then took his course thoughtfully in the direction of the town.
When the two men had disappeared from the dark map of the downs, a woman’s figure swiftly and quietly crossed it. Jane Granite had followed the minister like the spaniel that she was, and, hidden in the shadows of Ragged Rock, thinking to save him, God knew how, from Heaven knew what fate, had overheard the interview from beginning to end.
A fiery July was followed by a scorching August. There was a long drought, and simooms of fine, irritating dust. The gasping town and inland country flocked to the coast in more than the usual force. The hotels brimmed over. Even Windover fanned herself, and lay in hammocks lazily, watching for the two o’clock east wind to stir the topsails of the schooners trying under full canvas to crawl around the Point. In Angel Alley the heat was something unprecedented; and the devil shook hands with discomfort as he is fain to, and made new comrades.
Bayard was heavily overworked. He gave himself few pleasures, after the fashion of the man; and the summer people at the Point knew him not. He was not of them, nor of their world. Afterwards, he recalled, with a kind of pain lacking little of anguish, how few in number had been his evenings in the cool parlor of the cottage, where the lace curtains blew in and out through the purple twilight, or on the impearled harbor, in the dory, when the sun went down, and he drifted with her between earth and heaven, between light and reflection, in a glamour of color, in alternations of quiet, dangerous talk, and of more dangeroussilence; brief, stolen hours when duty seemed a dimming dream, and human joy the only reality, the sole value, the decreed and eternal end of life. Upon this rare and scanty substitute for happiness he fed; and from it he fled.
Between his devotions and his desertions the woman stood mute and inscrutable. And while they still moved apart, saying, “The summer is before us,” lo, the petals of the Cape roses had flown on the hot winds, the goldenrod was lifting its sword of flame on the undulating gray downs, and the summer was spent.
And yet, at every march and countermarch in the drill of duty, he was aware of her. It could not be said that she ever overstepped the invisible line which he had elected to draw between them; though it might be said that she had the fine pride which did not seem to see it. Helen had the quiet, maidenly reserve of an elder and more delicate day than ours. To throw her young enthusiasm into his work without obtruding herself upon his attention, was a difficult procedure, for which she had at once the decorum and the wit.
At unexpected crises and in unthought-of ways he came upon her footprints or her sleight-of-hand. Helen’s methods were purely her own. She followed neither law nor gospel; no rules or precedents controlled her. She relieved what suffering she chose, and omitted where she did elect; and he was sometimes astonished at the common sense of her apparent willfulness. She had no moretraining in sociological problems than the goldenrod upon the bosom of her white gown; yet she seldom made a serious mistake. In a word, this summer girl, playing at charity for a season’s amusement, poured a refreshing amount of novelty, vigor, ingenuity, and feminine defiance of routine into the labors of the lonely man. His too serious and anxious people found her as diverting as a pretty parlor play. A laugh ran around like a light flame whenever she came upon the sombre scene. She took a bevy of idle girls with her, and gave entertainments on which Angel Alley hung, a breathless and admiring crowd. She played, she sang, she read, she decorated. Pictures sprang on barren walls; books stood on empty shelves; games crowded the smoking-room; a piano replaced the painstaking melodeon; life and light leaped where she trod, into the poor and unpopular place. The people took to her one of the strong, loyal fancies of the coast. Unsuspected by her, or by himself, she began, even then, to be known among them as “the minister’s girl.” But this hurt nobody, neither herself nor him, and their deference to her never defaulted. In the indulgence of that summer’s serious mood, Helen seldom met, he was forced to suspect that she purposely avoided, the preacher. Often he entered a laughing home from which she had just vanished. Sometimes—but less often—he found that she had preceded him where death and trouble were. Their personal interviews were rare, and of her seeking, never.
“She is amusing herself with a novelty,” he thought. Then came the swift, unbidden question, If this is her beautiful whim, what would her dedication be?
Since, to play at helping a man’s work, though at the tip of the sceptre by which he held her back, meant sense and sympathy, fervor and courage like this, what would it be to the great and solemn purpose of his life, if she shared it, crowned queen?
It was an August evening, sultry and smoky. Forest fires had been burning for a week on the wooded side of the harbor, and the air was thick. It was Sunday, and the streets and wharves and beaches of Windover surged with vacuous eyes and irritable passions. The lock-ups were full, the saloons overflowed. The ribald song and excessive oath of the coast swept up and down like air currents. There had been several accidents and some fights. Rum ran in streams. It was one of the stifling evenings when the most decent tenement retains only the sick or the helpless, and when the occupants of questionable sailors’ boarding-houses and nameless dens crawl out like vermin fleeing from fire. It was one of the nights when the souls of women go to perdition, and when men do not argue with their vices. It was one of the nights when ease and cool, luxury and delicacy, forget the gehenna that they escape; and when only the strong few remember the weakness of the many.
Upon the long beach of fine white sand which spanned the space between the docks and the cliffs of the wooded coast, there gathered that evening a large and unusual crowd. Angel Alley was there en masse. The wharves poured out a mighty delegation. Dories put out from anchored vessels whose prows nodded in the inner harbor, and their crews swarmed to the beach in schools, like fish to a net.
A few citizens of another sort, moved, one might say, from curiosity, innocent or malicious, joined themselves to the fishermen and sailors. Their numbers were increased by certain of the summer people from the Point, drawn from their piazzas and their hammocks by rumors of a sensation. An out-of-door service, said to be the first of its kind conducted by the remarkable young preacher of such excellent family and such eccentric career, was not without its attractions even on the hottest evening of the season. There might have been easily eight hundred or a thousand people facing the light temporary desk or pulpit which had been erected at the head of the beach for the speaker’s use.
The hour was early, and it would have been very light but for the smoke in the air, through which the sun hung, quivering and sinister, with the malevolent blood-red color of drought and blasting heat.
“Statira,” in a low tone said the puzzled voice of the Professor of Theology,“this is—I must say—really, a most extraordinary gathering. It quite impresses me.”
“I have read something somewhere it reminds me of,” mused Mrs. Carruth, with a knot between her placid brows. “Where was it, Haggai?—Helen! Helen! What have I read that is like this? I can’t think whether it is George Eliot, or Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Perhaps it is the Memoirs of Whitefield; but certainly”—
“Possibly,” suggested Helen, “it may have been the New Testament.”
“That’s it! You have it!” cried Mrs. Carruth, with mild relief. “That’s the very thing. How extraordinary! Itisthe New Testament I have got into my head.”
The Professor of Theology changed color slightly, but he made no answer to his wife. He was absorbed in watching the scene before him. There were many women in the crowd, but men predominated in proportion significant to the eye familiar with the painfully feminine character of New England religious audiences. Of these men, four fifths were toilers of the sea, red of face, uncertain of step, rough of hand, keen of eye, and open of heart,—
“Fearing no God but wind and wet.”
The scent of bad liquor was strong upon the heavy, windless air; oaths rippled to and fro as easily as the waves upon the beach, and (it seemed) quite as much according to the laws of Nature.Yet the men bore a decent look of personal respect for the situation. All wore their best clothes, and most were clean for the occasion. They chatted among themselves freely, paying small heed to the presence of strangers, these being regarded as inferior aliens who did not know how to man a boat in a gale.
The fisherman’s sense of his own superior position is, in any event, something delightful. In this case there was added the special aristocracy recognized in Angel Alley as belonging to Bayard’s people. Right under the ears of the Professor of Theology uprose these awful words:—
“D—— them swells. He don’t care a —— for them. We get along up to Christlove without ’em, don’t we, Bob? The parson’s ourn, anyhow. He can’t be bothered with the likes o’ them.”
“Look a’ Job Slip yonder! See the face of him, shaved like a dude. That’s him, a-passin’ round hymn-books. Who’d believe it?Job!Why, he ain’t teched a —— drop sence he swore off! Look a’ that young one of his taggin’ to his finger! That’s his wife, that bleached-out creetur in a new bunnet. See the look of her now!”
“It’s a way women have,—lookin’ like that when a man swears off,” replied a young fellow, wriggling uncomfortably. “It kinder puts my eyes out—like it was a lamp turned up too high.”
He winked hard and turned away.
“Ben Trawl! Hello, Trawl!Youhere? So fond of the minister as this?”
“I like to keep my eye on him,” replied Ben Trawl grimly.
Captain Hap, distributing camp-chairs for the women of the audience, turned and eyed Ben over his shoulder. The Captain’s small, keen eyes held the dignity and the scorn of age and character.
“Shut up there!” he said authoritatively. “The minister’s comin’. Trot back to your grogshop, Ben. This ain’t no place for Judases, nor yet for rummies.”
“Gorry,” laughed a young skipper; “he ain’t got customers enough to okkepy him. They’re all here.”
Now there sifted through the crowd an eager, affectionate whisper.
“There! There’s the preacher. Look that way—See? That tall, thin fellar—him with the eyes.”
“That’s him! That’s him. That long-sparred fellar. Three cheers for him!” shouted the mate of a collier, flinging up his hat.
A billow of applause started along the beach. Then a woman’s voice called out:—
“Boys, he don’t like it!” and the wave of sound dropped as suddenly as it rose.
“He comes!” cried an Italian.
“So he does, Tony, so he does!” echoed the woman. “God bless him!”
“He comes,” repeated Tony.“Hush you, boys—the Christman comes!”
The Professor of Theology pressed the tips of his scholarly fingers upon his aging eyes.
It was some moments before he commanded himself, and looked up.
Bayard stood bareheaded in the color of the red sun. He was pale, notwithstanding the warmth of the evening, and had a look so worn that those who loved him most felt unspoken fear like the grip of a hand at their hearts. The transparence, the delicacy of his appearance,—bathed in the scarlet of the murky sunset, as he was,—gave him an aspect half unreal. He seemed for the moment to be a beautiful phantom rising from a mist of blood. A hush, half of reverence, half of awe, fell upon all the people; it grew so still that the lazy breath of the shallow wave at that moment spent upon the beach, could be heard stirring through the calm.
Suddenly, and before the preacher had spoken any word, the impressive silence was marred by a rude sound. It was a girl’s coarse laugh.
Then there was seen upon the beach, and quite apart from the throng, a little group of nameless women, standing with their backs to the sacred scene. Some one—Job Slip, perhaps, or Captain Hap—started with an exclamation of horror to suppress the disturbance, when the preacher’s lifted hand withstood him. To the consternation of his church officers, and to the astonishment of his audience, Bayard deliberately left the desk, and, passing through the throng, which respectfullydivided before him to left and right, himself approached the women.
“Lena!...Magdalena!”
He said but that word. The girl looked up—and down. She felt as if an archangel from the heavens, commissioned with the rebuke of God, had smitten her with something far more terrible—the mercy of man.
“You disturb us, Lena,” said the preacher gently. “Come.”
She followed him; and the girls behind her. They hung their heads. Lena scrawled she knew not what with the tip of her gaudy parasol upon the beach. Her heavy eyes traced the little pebbles in the sand. For her life, she thought, she could not have lifted her smarting lids. Till that moment, perhaps, Lena had never known what shame meant. It overwhelmed her, like the deluge which one dreams may foretell the end of the world.
The street girls followed the preacher silently. He conducted them gently through the throng, and seated them quite near the desk or table which served him as a pulpit. Some of his people frowned. The girls looked abashed at this courtesy.
Bayard ignored both evidences of attention to his unexpected act, passing it by as a matter of course, and without further delay made signs to his singers, and the service began.
Was it magic or miracle? Was it holiness or eloquence? Did he speak with the tongue of man or of angel? Where was the secret? What was the charm? Not a man or woman of them could have answered, but not a soul of them could have gainsaid the power of the preacher; the Professor of Theology least of all. This learned man stood the service out, upon the beach, behind the camp-chairs of his wife and daughter, and knew neither fatigue nor the critical faculty, till the beautiful worship drew to its end.
Bayard’s manner was quiet, finished, and persuasive; it must have appealed to the most fastidious oratorical taste; any instructor in homiletics might have seen in it a remarkable illustration of the power of consecrated education over ignorance and vice. But Bayard’s thought threw off ecclesiastical form as naturally as the gulls, arising from the harbor in the reddening sunset, tossed off the spray from their wings. No class of men are more responsive to originality than sea-going men. Of the humdrum, the commonplace, they will naught. Cant they scorn, and at religious snobbery they laugh.
It would be difficult to say what it was in Emanuel Bayard that most attracted them: whether his sincerity or his intellect, his spirituality or his manliness; or that mystical charm which comes not of striving, or of prayer, or of education—the power of an elect personality. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the fishermenloved him because he loved them. The idea is older than the time of this biography, but it will bear repeating.
The red sun dipped, and the hot night cooled. Dusk purpled on the breathless water, and on the long beach. A thousand restless people grew as gentle as one. The outlines of the preacher’s form softened into the surrounding shadow; the features of his high face melted and wavered. Only his appealing voice remained distinct. It seemed to be the cry of a spirit more than the eloquence of a man. It pleaded as no man pleads who has not forgotten himself, as no man can plead who is not remembered of God. Fishermen stood with one foot on the beach, and one on their stranded dories, like men afraid to stir. Rude, uncomfortable men in the heart of the crowd thrust their heads forwards with breath held in, as still as figure-heads upon a wreck. The uplifted eyes of the throng took on an expression of awe. It grew dimmer, and almost dark. And then, when no one could see the pathos of his face, they knew that he was praying for their souls. Some of the men fell upon their knees; but the heads of others got no lower than their guilty breasts, where they hung like children’s. The sound of stifled sobbing mingled with the sigh of the waves.
The unseen singers, breathing upon the last words of the prayer, chanted a solemn benediction. The tide was rising slowly, and the eternal Amen of the sea responded. Suddenly a lantern flashed—andanother—and light and motion broke upon the scene.
Rough men looked into one another’s wet faces, and were not ashamed. But some held their hats before their eyes. The girls in the front chairs moved away quietly, speaking to no person. But Lena separated herself from them, and disappeared in the dark. Job Slip had not arisen from his knees, and Mari, his wife, knelt by him. The woman’s expression was something touching to see, and impossible to forget. Captain Hap held a lantern up, and Bayard’s face shone out, rapt and pale.