When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the floods they shall not overflow thee!
When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the floods they shall not overflow thee!
It was as near to him as whispers in his ear, and peace was all about him.
He stood up, looked abroad, saw the beauty of the day, heard the dreaminess of the afternoon coming on, heard louder God's call to his heart, and knew that there was strength for all his need. It was then Pat came with his refreshment like a ministering angel.
When they got back to the city that evening there was a note from Bonnie, the first Courtland had received since the formal announcement of her arrivaland her gratitude to him for being the means of bringing her to that dear home.
This letter was almost as brief as the first, but it breathed a spirit of peace and content. She enclosed a check on the funeral account. Bonnie was well and happy. She was teaching the grammar-school where Stephen Marshall used to study when he was a little boy, and giving music lessons in the afternoons. She would soon be able to pay back everything she owed and to do a daughter's share in the home where she was treated like an own child. She closed by saying that the kindness he had shown her would never be forgotten; that he had seemed to her, and always would, like the messenger of the Lord sent to help her in her despair.
There was a ring so fresh and strong and true in this little letter, that he could but recognize it. He sighed and thought how strange it was that he should almost resent it, coming as it did in contrast with Gila's falseness. Gila who had professed to love him so deeply, and then had so easily laid that love aside and put on another. Perhaps all girls were the same. Perhaps this Bonnie, too, would do the same if a man turned out not to have her ideals.
He answered Bonnie's note in a day or two with a cordial one, returning her check, assuring her that everything was fully paid, and expressing his pleasure that she had found a real home and congenial work. Then he dismissed her from his mind.
A week later he went to the seminary, and Pat accompanied him as far as the preparatory school where he was to enter upon his duties as athletic coach.
Courtland found the atmosphere of the seminary quite different from college. The men were older. They had chosen definitely their work in the world.Their talk was of things ecclesiastical. The happenings of the day were spoken of with reference to the religious world. It was a new viewpoint in every sense of the word. And yet he was disappointed that he did not find a more spiritual atmosphere among the young men who were studying for the ministry. If anywhere in the world the Presence might be expected to be moving and apparent it should be here, he reasoned, where men had definitely given themselves to the study of the Gospel of Christ, and where all were supposed to believe in Him and to have acknowledged Him before the world. He found himself the only man in the place who was not a member of any church, and yet there were but three or four that he had the feeling he could speak to about the Presence and not be looked upon as "queer." There was much worldly talk. There was a great deal of church gossip about churches and ministers; what this one was paid and what that one got; the chances of a man being called to a city church when he was just out of the seminary. It was the way his father had talked when he told him he wanted to study theology. It turned him sick at heart to hear them. It seemed so far from the attitude a servant of the Lord should have. He was in a fair way to lose his ideal of ministers as well as of women. He mentioned it one day bitterly to Pat when he came over to spend a spare evening, as he frequently did.
"I think you're wrong," said Pat, in his queer, abrupt way. "From what I can figure there was only a few of those guys got around Christ and knew what he really was! You didn't suppose it would be any different now, did you? Guess you'll find it that way everywhere, only a fewrealfolks inanygang!"
Courtland looked at Pat in wonder. He was a constant surprise to his friend, in that he grew so fast inthe Christian life. He had a little Bible that he had bought before he left the city. It was small and fine and expensive, utterly unlike Pat, and he carried it with him always, apparently read it much. He hadn't been given to reading anything more than was required at college, so it was the more surprising. He told Courtland he wanted to know the rules of the game if he was going to get in it. His sturdy common-sense often gave Courtland something to think about. Pat was bringing his new religion to bear upon his work. He already had a devoted bunch of boys to whom he was dealing out wholesome truths beginning a new era in the school. The head-master looked on in amazement, for morality hadn't been one of the chief recommendations that the faculty of the university had given Pat. They had, in fact, privately cautioned the school that they would have to watch out for such things themselves. Instead, however, of finding a somewhat lawless man in their new coach, the head-master was surprised to discover a purity campaign on foot, a ban on swearing and cigarette-smoking such as they had never been able to establish before. It came to their ears that Pat had personally conducted an offender along these lines out to the boundaries of the school grounds, well behind the gymnasium, where there was utmost privacy, and administered a good thrashing on his own account. The faculty watched anxiously to see the effect of such summary treatment on the student body, but were relieved to find that the new coach's following was in no wise diminished, and that better conduct began presently to be the order of the day.
Pat and Courtland were much together these days, and one Sunday afternoon in late October, while the sun was still warm, they took the athletic teams a long hike over the country. When they sat down to restPat asked Courtland to tell the boys about Stephen, and the Presence.
That was the real beginning of Courtland's ministry, those unexpected, spontaneous talks with the boys, where he could speak his heart and not be afraid of being misunderstood.
There were two or three professors in the seminary who struck Courtland as being profoundly spiritual and sincere in their lives. They were old men, noted for their scholarship and their strong faith the world over. They taught as Courtland imagined a prophet might have taught in the days of the Old Testament, with their ears ever open to see what the Lord would have them speak to the children of men. At their feet he sat and drank in great draughts of knowledge, going away satisfied. There were other professors, some of them brilliant in the extreme, whose whole attitude toward the Bible and Christ seemed to have an undertone of flippancy, and who fairly delighted to find an unauthentic portion over which they might haggle away the precious hours of the class-room. They lacked the reverent attitude toward their subject which only could save the higher criticism from being destructive rather than constructive.
As the year went by he came to know his fellow-students better, and to find among them a few earnest, thoroughly consecrated fellows, most of them plain men like Burns, who had turned aside from the world's allurements to prepare themselves to carry the gospel to those who were in need. Most of them were poor men also, and of humble birth, with a rare one now and then of brains and family and wealth, like Courtland, to whom God had come in some peculiar way. These were a group apart from others, whom the rest respected and admired, yet laughed at in a gentle, humoringsort of way, as if they wasted more energy on their calling than there was any real need to do. Some of them were going to foreign lands when they were through, had already been assigned to their mission stations, and were planning with a special view to the needs of the locality. Courtland felt an idler and drone among them that he did not yet know what he was to do.
The men, as they came to know him better, predicted great things for him: wealthy churches falling at his feet, brilliant openings at his disposal; but Courtland took no part in any such discussions. He had the attitude of heart that he was to be guided, when he was through his studies, into the place where he was most needed; it mattered not where so it was the place God would have him to be.
In February Burns had a farewell service in his church. He had resigned his pastorate and was going to China. Pat and Courtland went down to the city to attend the service; and Monday saw him off to San Francisco for his sea voyage to China.
Courtland, as he stood on the platform watching the train move away with his friend, wished he could be on that train going with Burns to China. He was to take up Burns's work around the settlement and in the factory section; to see some of his friend's plans through to completion. He was almost sorry he had promised. He felt utterly inadequate to the necessity!
Spring came, and with it the formal announcement of Tennelly's and Gila's engagement. Courtland and Pat each read it in the papers, but said nothing of it to each other. Courtland worked the harder these days.
He tried to plunge into the work and forget self, and to a certain extent was successful. He found plenty of distress and sorrow to stand in contrast with hisown; and his hands and heart were presently full to overflowing.
Like the faithful fellow-worker that he was, Pat stuck by him. Both looked forward to the week that Tennelly had promised to spend with them. But instead of Tennelly came a letter. Gila's plans interfered and he could not come. He wrote joyously that he was sorry, but he couldn't possibly make it. It shone between every line that Tennelly was overwhelmingly happy.
"Good old Nelly!" said Courtland, with a sigh, handing the letter over to Pat, for these two shared everything these days.
Courtland stood staring out of the window at the vista of roofs and tall chimneys. The blistering summer sun simmered hot and sickening over the city. Red brick and dust and grime were all around him. His soul was weary of the sight and faltered in its way. What was the use of living? What?
Then suddenly he straightened up and leaned from the window alertly! The fire alarm was sounding. Its sinister wheeze shrilled through the hot air tauntingly! It sounded again. One! two! One! two! three! It was in the neighborhood.
Without waiting for a word, both men sprang out the door and down the stairs.
"The Whited Sepulcher," as some of the bitterest of her poorly paid slaves called the model factory, stood coolly, insolently, among her dirty, red-brick, grime-stained neighbors; like some dainty lady appareled in sheer muslins and jewels appearing on the threshold of the hot kitchen where her servitors were sweating and toiling to prepare her a feast.
The luxuriant vines were green and abundant, creeping coolly about the white walls, befringing the windows charmingly, laying delicate clinging fingers even up to the very eaves, and straying out over the roof. No matter how parched the ground in the little parks of the district, no matter how yellow the leaves on the few stunted trees near by, no matter how low the city's supply of water, nor how many public fountains had to be temporarily shut off, that vine was always well watered. Its root lay deep in soft, moist earth well fertilized and cared for; its leaves were washed anew each evening with refreshing spray from the hose that played over it. "Seems like I'd just like to lie down there and sleep with my face clost up to it, all wet and cool-like, all night!" sighed one poor little bony victim of a girl, scarcely more than a child, as the throng pressed out the wide door at six o'clock and caught the moist fragrance of the damp earth and growing vine.
"You look all in, Susie!" said her neighbor, pausing in her interminable gum-chewing to eye her friendkeenly. "Say, you better go with me to the movies to-night! I know a nice cool one fer a nickel!"
"Can't!" sighed Susie. "'Ain't got ther nickel, and, besides, I gotta stay with gran'mom while ma goes up with some vests she's been makin'. Oh, I'm all right! I jus' was thinkin' about the vine; it looks so cool and purty. Say, Katie, it's somepin' to b'long to a vine like that, even if we do have it rotten sometimes! Don't you always feel kinda proud-like when you come in the door, 'most as if it was a palace? I like to pertend it's all a great big house where I live, and there's carpets and lace curtings to the winders, and a real gold sofy with pink-velvet cushings! And when I come down and see one of the company's ottymobiles standin' by the curb waitin', I like to pertend it's mine, only I don't ride 'cause I've been ridin' so much I'drutherwalk! Don't you ever do that, Katie?"
"Not on yerlife, I don't!" said Katie, with an ugly frown. "I hate the old dump! I hate every stone in the whole pile! I could tear that nasty green vine down an' stamp on it. I'd like to strip its leaves off an' leave it bare. I'd like to turn the hose off and see it dry up an' be all brown, an' ugly, an' dead. It's stealin' the water they oughtta have over there in the fountain. It's stealin' the money they oughtta pay us fer our work! It's creepin' round the winders an' eatin' up the air. Didn't you never take notice to how they let it grow acrost the winders to hide folks from lookin' in from the visitor's winders there on the east side? They don't care how it shuts away the draught and makes it hotter 'n a furnace where we work! No, you silly! I never was proud to come in that old marble door! I was always mad, away down inside, that I had to work here. I had to go crawlin' and askin' fer a job, an' take all their insults, an' be locked in atrap. Take it from me, there's goin' to be some awful accident happen here some day! If a fire should break out how many d'you s'pose could get out before they was burned to a crisp? Did you know them winders was nailed so they wouldn't go up any higher 'n a foot? Did you know they 'ain't got 'nouf fire-escapes to get half of us out ef anythin' happened? Did you never take notice to the floor roun' them three biggest old machines they've got up on the sixth? I stepped acrost there this mornin'—Mr. Brace sent me up on a message to the forewoman—an' that floor shook under my feet like a earthquake! Sam Warner says the building ain't half strong enough fer them machines, anyway. He says they'd oughtta put 'em down on the first floor; but they didn't want to 'cause they don't show off good to visitors, so they stuck 'em up on the sixth, where they don't many see 'em. But Sam says some day they're goin' to bust right through the floor, an' ef they do, they ain't gonta stop till they get clear down to the cellar, an' they'll wipe out everythin' in their way when they go! B'leeve me! I don't wantta be workin' here when that happens!"
"Good night!" said Susie, turning pale. "Them big machines on the sixth is right over where I work on the fifth! Say, Katie, le's ast Mr. Brace to put us on the other side the room! Aw, gee! Katie! What's the use o' livin'? I'd 'most be willin' to be dead jest to get cool! Seems zif it's allus either awful hot er awful cold!"
They went to their stifling tenements and their unattractive suppers. They dragged their weary feet over the hot, dark pavements, laughing and talking boisterously with their comrades, or crowded into places of amusement to forget for a little while, then to creep back to toss the night out on a hard cot inbreathless air or to creep to fire-escape or flat roof for a few brief hours of relief, till it was time to return to the vine-clad factory and its hot, noisy slavery for another day.
Three girls fainted on the fifth floor and two on the sixth next morning. They were not carried to the cool and shaded rest-rooms to revive, but lay on the floor with their heads huddled on a pile of waste, and had a little warmish water from the rusty "cooler" in the back stairway poured upon them as they lay. No white-clad nurse with palm leaf and cooling drinks attended their unconscious state, although there was one in attendance in the rest-room whose duty it was to look after the comfort of any chance visitors. When any stooped to succor here, she fanned her neighbor with her apron, casting an anxious eye on her own silent machine and knowing she was losing "time."
Susie fainted three times that morning, and Katie lost an hour in all, bringing water and making a fan out of a newspaper. Also she had an angry altercation with the foreman. He said if Susie "played up" this way she'd have to quit; there were plenty of girls waiting to take her place, and he hadn't time to fool with kids that wanted to lie around and be fanned. It was his last few words as she was reviving that stung Susie to life again and put her back at her machine for the last time in nervous panic, with the thought of what would happen at home if she lost her job. Up above her the great heavy machines thrashed on and the floor trembled with their movement. Black and thick and hot was the air around Susie and she scarcely could see, for dizziness, the machinery which she worked from habit, as she stood swaying in her place, and wondering if she could hold out till the noon whistle blew.
Down in the basement, near one of the elevator shafts, a pile of waste lay smoldering, out of sight. One of the boys from the lumber-yard down the next block had stopped to light his cigarette as he passed out into the street after bringing a bill to the head manager. He tossed his match away, not seeing where it fell. The big factory thundered on in full swing of a busy, driving morning, and the little match lay nursing its flame and smoldering.
How long it crept and smoldered no one knew. It seemed to come from every floor at once, that smell of smoke and cry of fire! More smoke in volumes pouring up suddenly through cracks and bursting from the elevator shaft; a lick of flame darting out like a serpent ready to strike, menacing against the heat of the big rooms.
Panic and smoke and fire! Cries and clashing of machinery thundering on like a storm above an angry sea!
The girls rushed together in fear, or, screaming, ran desperately to windows which they knew they could not raise! They pounded at the locked doors and crowded in the narrow passages, frantically surging this way and that. There was no one to quiet them or tell them what to do. If some one would only stop that awful machinery! Was the engineer dead?
Mockingly the little cool vines crept in about the window-sills and over the imprisoning panes, as if to taunt the victims who were caught in the death-trap.
"At any rate, if we die you'll die too!" cried Katie Craigin, shaking her fist at the long green tendrils that swept across the window nearest her machine. "Oh, you! You'll burn to a crisp at the roots! You'll wither up an' die. You'll be dead an' brown an' ugly! An' I'm glad!Glad!For I hate you.I hate you!Do you hear?" And she grasped a handful of leaves that edged the window-sill, spat upon them, and stamped them under her foot, then turned to look for Susie.
But Susie had fallen once more by her machine, leaving it unguarded while it thrashed on uselessly. Her little pinched face looked up from the dirty floor in pitiful unconsciousness amid the wild rush and whirl of the fear-maddened company. If terror drove them they would pass over her without knowing it. They were blind with desperation.
The room seemed about to burst with the heat. Timbers were cracking. All the stories they had heard of the frailty of the building came now to goad them as they hurtled from one end of their pen to the other, while intermittent clouds of smoke and darting flames conspired to bewilder their senses.
Katie sprang to seize her friend and draw her out of the path of the stampede. As she lifted her a cry arose, like the wail of a lost world facing the judgment. The floor swayed, the machines about seemed to totter, and the floor above seemed bending down with some great weight. There was a cracking, wrenching, twisting, as of the whole great building in mortal pain, and just as Katie drew her unconscious friend away to the window the floor above gave way and down crashed three awful machines, like great devouring juggernauts, to crush and bear away whatever came in their way.
After that, hell itself could scarcely have presented a more terrible spectacle of writhing, tortured souls, pinned anguishing amid the flames; of white faces below looking up to ghastly ones above that gazed down with horror into the awful cavern, closed their eyes, clung to walls and windows, and knew not what to do!
The fearful noise of machinery had suddenly ceasedand been succeeded by a calm in which the soft sound of rushing flames, the babble of the crowd outside, the gong of fire-engines, and the cry of firemen seemed balm of music in the ears. Water hissed on hot machinery and burning walls. It splashed inside the window and on the white face of Susie. It touched the hot hands of Katie as she lifted her friend nearer to the blessed spray. A shadow of a ladder somewhere crossed the window. Splintered glass fell all about her, and a hand reached in and crushed the window frame.
It was Pat who lifted out the limp Susie and handed her down to Courtland, who was just below, while Katie turned and looked back at the fearful pit of fire beneath her, knowing that in but a few more seconds, if help came not, she, too, would be a part of that writhing, awful heap! She saw the white face and staring eyes of the gray-haired woman who ran the machine next to hers lying beneath a pile of dead. She reeled and felt her senses going. Her hot hands clung to the hotter window-ledge. The flames were leaping nearer! She could not hold out—
Then a strong hand grasped her and drew her out into the blessed air, and she felt herself being carried down, down, safely, wondering, as she went, if the vine was roasted yet, or if it still smirked greenly outside this holocaust; wished she had strength to shake a mocking finger at it; and then she knew no more.
For three long hours Courtland and Pat worked side by side, bringing out the living, searching for the dead and dying, carrying them to an improvised hospital in an old warehouse in the next block. Grim and soiled and gray, with singed hair, blistered hands and faces, and sickened hearts, they toiled on.
To Courtland the experience was like walking with God and being shown the way he might have gone,and how he had been saved. If he had accepted Ramsey Thomas's proposition he would have been a sharer in the sin that caused this catastrophe. He would have been a murderer, almost as much responsible for that charred body lying at his feet, for all those dead and dying, as if he had owned the place.
The whited sepulcher lay a heap of blackened ruins. Only one small corner rose, of blackened marble, to which clung a fragment of brave green to show what had been but a few short hours before. The morning's sun would see it, too, withered and black like the rest. The model factory was gone! But the money that had built it, the money that it had made, was still in existence to build it over again, a perpetual blind to the lawmakers who might have otherwise put a stop to its abuses! It would undoubtedly be built again, more whited, more sepulchral than before.
As he looked upon the ruin a great resolve came to him. He would give his life to fight the power that was setting its heel upon humanity and putting a price upon its blood. He would devote all his powers to the uplifting of people who had been downtrodden and oppressed in the simple act of earning their daily bread!
Ramsey Thomas, happening to be in a near-by city, and answering a summons by telegraph, arrived at the scene in an automobile as Courtland stood there, grimed and tattered from his fight with death.
Ramsey Thomas, baffled, angry, distressed, wriggled out of his car to the sidewalk and faced Courtland, curiously conspicuous and recognizable with all his disarray. Courtland towered above the great man with righteous wrath in his eyes. Ramsey Thomas cringed and looked embarrassed. He had come to look over the ground to see how much trouble they were going to have getting the insurance, and he hadn't expectedto be met by a giant Nemesis with blackened face and singed eyebrows.
"Oh, why—I," he began, nervously. "It's Mr. Courtland, isn't it? They tell me you've been very helpful during the fire! I'm sure we're much obliged. We'll not forget this, I assure you—"
"Mr. Thomas," broke in Courtland, in a clear, decisive voice, "you wanted to know a year ago why I wouldn't accept your proposition, and you couldn't understand my reason for refusing. There it is!"
He pointed eloquently to the heap of ruins.
"Go over to that warehouse and see the rows of charred bodies! Look at the agonized faces of the dead, and hear the groans of the dying. See the living who are scarred or crippled for life. You are responsible for all that! If I had accepted your proposal I would have been responsible, too. And now I mean to spend the rest of my life fighting the conditions that make such a catastrophe as this possible!"
Courtland turned, and in spite of his tatters and soil walked majestically away from him down the street.
Ramsey Thomas stood rooted to the ground, watching him, a strange mingling of emotions chasing one another over his rugged old countenance: astonishment, admiration, and fury in quick succession.
"Drat him!" he said, under his breath. "Drat him! Now he'll be a worse pest than that little rat of a preacher, for he's got twice as much brains and education!"
The summer passed in hard, earnest work.
Courtland had been back at his studies four weeks when there came another letter from Tennelly. Gila had gone to her aunt's, down at Beechwood, for a two weeks' stay. She was worn out with the various functions of the summer and needed a complete rest. They were to be married soon, perhaps in December, and there would be a lot to do to prepare for that. She was going to rest absolutely, and had forbidden him to follow her, so he had some leisure on his hands. Would Courtland like to spend a week-end somewhere along the coast half-way between? They could each take their cars and meet wherever Courtland said.
It was Saturday morning when Courtland received the letter. Pat had gone down to the city for over Sunday. An inexpressible longing filled him to see Tennelly again, before his marriage completed the wall that was between them. He wanted to have a real old-fashioned talk; to look into the soul of his friend and see the old loyalty shining there. He wanted more than all to come close to him once more, and, it might be, tell him about the Christ.
He took down his road-book, turned to the map, and let his finger fall on the coast-line about midway between the city and the seminary. Looking it up in the book, he found Shadow Beach described as a quiet and exclusive resort with a good inn, excellent service,fine sea-bathing, etc. Well, that would do as well as anywhere. He telegraphed Tennelly:
Meet me at Shadow Beach, Howland's Inlet, Elm Tree Inn, this evening.
Meet me at Shadow Beach, Howland's Inlet, Elm Tree Inn, this evening.
Court.
It was dark when he reached Elm Tree Inn. The ocean rolled, a long black line flecked with faint foam, along the shore, and luminous with a coming moon. Two dim figures, like moving shadows, went down the sand picked out against the path of the moon. Save for those all was lonely, up and down. Courtland shivered slightly and almost wished he had selected some more cheerful spot for the meeting. He had not realized how desolate a sea can be when it is growing cold. Nevertheless, it was majestic. It seemed like eternity in its limitless stretch. The lights in far harbors glinted out in the distance down the coast. Somehow the vast emptiness filled him with sadness. He felt as if he were entering upon anything but a pleasant reunion, and half wished he had not come.
Courtland ran his car up to the entrance and sprang out. He was glad to get inside, where a log fire was crackling. The warmth and the light dispelled his sadness. Things began to take on a cheerful aspect again.
"I suppose you haven't many guests left," he said, pleasantly, as he registered.
"Only him, sir!" said the clerk, pointing to the entry just above Courtland's.
"James T. Aquilar and wife, Seattle, Washington," Courtland read, idly, and turned away.
"They been here two days. Come in a nerroplane!" went on the clerk, communicatively.
"Fly all the way from Seattle?" asked Courtland,idly. He was looking at his watch and wondering if he should order supper or wait until Tennelly arrived.
"Well, I can't say for sure. He's mighty uncommunicative, but he's given out he flies 'most anywhere the notion takes him. He's got his machine out in the lot back o' the inn. You oughtta see it. It's a bird!"
"H'm!" said Courtland. "I must have a look at it in daylight. I'm looking for a friend up from the city pretty soon. Guess it would be more convenient for you if we dined together. I'll wait a bit. Meantime, let me see what rooms you have."
When Courtland came back to the office and sat down before the fire to wait, the spell of sadness seemed to have vanished.
He sat for half an hour, with his head thrown back in the easy-chair, watching the flames, thinking back over old college memories that the thought of Tennelly made vivid again. In the midst of it he heard steps on the veranda. Some one from outside unlatched the door and flung it open. A wild, careless laugh floated in on the cold breath of the sea. Courtland came to his feet as if he had been called! That laugh had gone through his heart like a knife, with its heartless baby-like mirth. It was Gila! Had Tennelly played him false, after all, and brought her along? Was this some kind of a ruse to get them together? For he knew that Tennelly was distressed over their alienation, and that he understood to some extent that it was on account of Gila that he always avoided accepting the many invitations which were continually pressed upon him to come down to the city and be with his friends once more.
The door swung wide on its hinges and Gila entered, trig and chic as usual, in a stylish little coat-suit of homespun, leather-trimmed and short-skirted, highboots, leather leggings, and a jaunty little leather cap with a bridle under her chin. Only her petite figure and her baby face saved her from being taken for a tough young sport. She swaggered in, chewing gum, her gauntleted hands in her pockets, her young voice flung almost coarsely into the room by the wind; the innocent look gone from her face; the eyes wide and bold; the exquisite mouth in a sensuous curve.
Behind her lounged a man older than herself by many years, with silver at his temples, daredevil eyes, and a handsome, voluptuous face. He kicked the door shut behind him and lolled against it while he lit a cigarette.
Gila's laugh rang harshly in the room again, following some low-toned remark, and the man laughed coarsely in reply. Then, suddenly, she looked up and saw Courtland standing sternly there with folded arms, regarding her steadily, and her eyes grew wide with horror.
It was Courtland's great disillusionment.
Never had he seen such fear in human face.
Gila's skin grew gray beneath its pearly tint, her whole body shrank and cringed, her eyes were fixed upon him with terror in their gaze.
"Papers haven't come in yet, Mr. Aquilar," called the clerk, affably. "Train's late to-night. Be in pretty soon, I reckon!"
The man growled out an imprecation on a place where the papers didn't come till that hour in the evening, and lounged on toward the elevator. Gila slid along by his side, her eyes on Courtland, with the air of hiding behind her companion. Her face was drooped, and when she turned toward the elevator she drooped her eyes also, and a wave of shame rolled up and covered her face and neck and ears with a dull redbeneath the pearl. Her last glance at Courtland was the look that Eve must have had as she walked past the flaming swords, with Adam, out of Eden. Her eyes, as she stood waiting for the boy to come to the elevator, seemed fairly to grovel on the floor.
Was this the sweet, wild, innocent flower that had held him in its thrall all the sorrowful months, and separated him from his dearest friend?
Tennelly! Courtland had forgotten until that instant that Tennelly would be there in a few minutes! Perhaps was even then at the door!
He strode forward, and Gila quivered as she saw him coming; quivered and looked up in terror, putting out a fearful hand to the arm of her companion.
The elevator-boy had arrived and was slamming back the steel grating. The man stood back to let Gila enter, and she slunk past him, her gaze still held in horror on Courtland.
"Will you do me the favor to step into the little reception-room to the right for a moment?" said Courtland, addressing the man, but looking at Gila.
"The devil we will!" said the man, glaring at him. "What right have you to ask a favor like that?"
But Courtland was looking at Gila, and there was command in his eyes. As if she dared not disobey she stepped forth again from the elevator, her eyes still upon him, her face gray with apprehension. Without further word from him she walked before him, slowly, into the little room at the right that he indicated.
"You're a fool!" said Aquilar, regarding her contemptuously, but she went as if she did not hear him. She entered the room, walked half-way across, and turned about, facing the two who had followed. Courtland was within the room, Aquilar lounging idly in the door, as if the matter were of little moment to him.He had a smile of contempt still on his handsome lips.
Courtland's manner was grave and sad. He had the commanding presence and beauty of an avenging angel.
"Gila, are you married to this man?" he asked, looking sternly at her, as though he would search her very soul.
Gila kept her dark, horrified gaze on his face. She was beyond trying to deceive now. She slowly gave one shake to her head, and her white lips formed the syllable, "No!" though it was almost inaudible.
"And yet you are registered here in this hotel as his wife?"
Her eyes suddenly flamed with shame. She drooped them before his gaze and seemed to try to assent, but her head was drooped too low to bow. She lifted miserable pleading looks to his face twice, but could not stand the clear rebuke of his gaze. It was like the whiteness of the reproach of God, and her little sinful soul could not bear it. She lifted a handkerchief and uttered something like a sob. It was as one might think would be the sound of a lost soul looking back at what might have been.
"What the devil have you got to say about it? Who the devilareyou, anyway?" roared the man from the doorway.
The elevator-boy and clerk were all agog. The latter had come out of his pen and was standing behind the boy, on tiptoe, where they could get a good view of the scene. The room was tense with stillness.
Aquilar's voice was not one to pass unnoticed when he spoke in anger, but Courtland did not even lift an eyelid toward him.
Perhaps Aquilar's words had given Gila courage, forshe suddenly lifted her eyes to Courtland's face again, a flash of vengeance in them:
"I suppose you are going to tell Lew all about it?" she flung out, bitterly. "I suppose you will make up a great story to go and tell Lew. But you don't suppose he will believeyouagainstme, do you?"
Her eyes were flashing fire now. Her old imperious manner was upon her. She had driven him from her once! She would defeat him again!
He watched her without a change of countenance. "No, I shall not tell him," he said, quietly; "butyou will!"
"I?" Gila turned a glance of contemptuous amusement upon him. "Some chance! And I warn you that if you attempt to tattle anything about it I will turn, the tables against you in a way you little suspect."
"Gila, you will tell Lew Tennellyeverything, or you will never marry him! It is his right to know! And now, sir"—Courtland turned to Aquilar, lounging amusedly against the doorway—"if you will step outside I willsettle with you!"
But suddenly Gila gave a scream and covered her face with her hands, for there, just behind Aquilar, stood Tennelly, looking like a ghost. He had heard it all!
Tennelly stepped within the room, gave one keen, questioning look at Aquilar as he passed him, searching straight into the depths of his startled, shifty eyes, and came and stood before the crouching girl. She had dropped into a chair and was sobbing as if her heart would break.
"What does this mean, Gila?"
Tennelly's voice was cold and stern.
Courtland looked at his shocked face and turned away from the pain of it. But when he looked for the man who had wrought this havoc he had suddenly melted from the room! The front door was blowing back and forth in the wind, and the clerk and bell-boy stood, open-mouthed, staring. Courtland closed the door of the reception-room and hurried out on the veranda, but saw no sign of any one in the wind-swept darkness. The moon had risen enough to make a bright path over the sea, but the earth as yet was wrapped in shadow.
Down in the field, beyond the outbuildings, he heard a whirring sound, and as he looked a dark thing rose like a great bird high above his head. The bird had flown while the flying was good. The lady might face her difficulties alone!
Courtland stood below in the courtyard, while the moon arose and shed its light through the sky, and the great black bird executed an evolution or two andwhirred off to the north, doubtless headed for Seattle or some equally inaccessible point. A great helpless wrath was upon him. Dolt that he had been to let this human leper escape from him into the world again! A kind of divine frenzy seized him to capture him yet and put him where he could work no further harm to other willing victims. Yes, he thought of Gila as a willing victim! An hour before he would have called her just plain innocent victim. Now something in her face, her attitude, as she saw him and walked away with her guilty partner, had made him know her at last for a sinful woman. The shackles had burst from his heart and he was free from her allurements for evermore! He understood now why she had bade him choose between herself and Christ. She had no part nor lot in things pure and holy. She hated holiness because she herself was sinful!
It was midnight before Gila and Tennelly came forth, Tennelly grave and sad, Gila tear-stained and subdued.
Courtland was sitting in the big chair before the fireplace, though the fire was smoldering low, and the elevator-boy had long ago retired to slumbers on a bench in a hidden alcove.
Tennelly came straight to Courtland, as though he had known he would be waiting there for him. "I am going to take Gila down to Beechwood. You will come with us?" There was entreaty in the tone, though it was very quiet.
"Shall I take my car?"
"No. You will ride with me on the front seat. Is there a maid here that I can hire to go with us? We can bring her back in the morning."
"I'll find out."
That was a silent ride through the late moonlight.The men spoke only when it was necessary to keep the right road. Gila, huddled sullenly in the back seat beside a dozing, gray-haired chambermaid, spoke not at all. And who shall say what were her thoughts as hour after hour she sat in her humiliation and watched the two men whom she had wronged so deeply? Perhaps her spirit seethed the more violently within her silent, angry body because she was not yet sure of Tennelly. Her tears and explanations, her pleading little story of deceit and innocence, had not wrought the charm upon him that they might had not Aquilar been known to him for the past two weeks, a stranger who had been hanging about Gila, and who had been encouraged against her lover's oft-repeated warnings. A certain mysterious story of an unfaithful wife put an air of romance about him that Tennelly had not liked. Gila had never seen him so serious and hard to coax as he had been to-night. He had spoken to her as if she were a naughty child; had commanded her to go at once to her aunt in Beechwood and remain there the allotted time. She simplyhadto obey or lose him. There were things about Tennelly's fortune and prospects that made him most desirable as a husband. Moreover, she felt that through marrying Tennelly she could the better hurt Courtland, the man whom she now hated with all her heart.
They reached Beechwood at not too unearthly an hour. The aunt was surprised, but not unduly so, for Gila was a girl of many whims, and that she came at all to quiet Beechwood to rest was shock enough for one day. She asked no troublesome questions.
Tennelly would not remain for breakfast, even, but started on the return trip at once, with only a brief stop at a wayside inn for something to eat. The elderly attendant in the back seat was disappointed. She hadno chance to get a bit of gossip by the way with any one, but she got good pay for the night's ride, and made up some thrilling stories to tell when she got back that were really better than the truth might have turned out to be, so there was nothing lost, after all.
It was Tennelly who broke the silence between them when he and Courtland were at last alone together. "She only went for a ride in his aeroplane," he said, sadly. "She had no idea of staying more than an afternoon. He had promised to set her down at the next station to Beechwood, where her aunt was to meet her. She was filled with horror and consternation when she found she must be away overnight. But even then she had no idea of his purpose. She says that nobody ever told her about such things, she was ignorant as a little child! She is full of repentance, and feels that this will be a lesson for her. She says she intends to devote her life to me if I will only forgive her."
So that was what she had told Tennelly behind the closed doors!
Before Courtland's eyes there floated a vision of Gila as she first caught sight of him in the office of the inn. If ever soul was guilty in full knowledge of her sin she had been! Again she passed before his vision with shamed head down-drooped and all her proud, imperial manner gone. The mask had fallen from Gila forever so far as Courtland was concerned. Not even her little, pitiful, teary face that morning, when she crept from the car at her aunt's door, could deceive him again.
"And youbelieveall that?" asked Courtland. He could not help it. His dearest friend was in peril. What else could he do?
"I—don't know!" said Tennelly, helplessly.
There was silence in the room. Then Tennelly didrealize a little! Perhaps Tennelly had known all along, better than he!
"And—you will forgive her?"
"Imust!" said Tennelly, in desperation. "Court, my life is bound up in her!"
"So I once thought!" Courtland was only musing out loud.
Tennelly looked at him sadly.
"She almost wrecked my soul!" went on Courtland.
"I know," said Tennelly, in profound sorrow. "She told me."
"Shetold you?"
"Yes, before we were engaged. She told me that she had asked you to give up preaching, that she could never bear to be a minister's wife. I had begun to realize what that would mean to you then. I respected your choice. It was great of you, Court! But you never really loved her, man, or you could not have given her up!"
Courtland was silent for a moment, then he burst out: "Nelly! It was not that! Youshallknow the truth! She asked me to give upmy Godfor her!"
"I have no God," said Tennelly, dully.
A great yearning for his friend filled the heart of Courtland. "Listen, old man, youmustn'tmarry her!" he burst out again. "I believe she's rotten all the way through. You didn't see and hear all last night. Shecan't betrue! She hasn't it in her! She will be false to you whenever she takes the whim! She will lead you through hell!"
"You don't understand. I wouldgothrough hell to be with her!"
Tennelly's words rang through the room like a knell, and Courtland could say no more. There was silence in the room. Courtland watched his friend's haggardface anxiously. There were deep lines of agony about his mouth and dark circles under his eyes.
Suddenly Tennelly lifted his hand and laid it on his friend's. "Thanks, Court. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it all more than you know. But this is my job. I guess I've got to undertake it! And,man! can't you see I'vegotto believe her?"
"I suppose you have, Nelly. God help you!"
When Courtland got back to the seminary he found a letter from Mother Marshall.
Courtland opened Mother Marshall's letter with a feeling of relief and anticipation. Here at least would be a fresh, pure breath of sweetness. His soul was worn and troubled with the experience of the past two days. A great loneliness possessed him when he thought of Tennelly, or when he looked forward to his future, for he truly was convinced that he never should turn to the love of woman again; and so the dreams of home and love and little children that had had their normal part in his thoughts of the future were cut out, and the days stretched forward in one long round of duty.