SANCTUARY
Some men fall out of love with their wives as easily and unconcernedly
as they fell in. They even feel a sort of relief, thinking a
disturbing factor thus removed from their lives, and they live happily
ever after. But they are not "temperamental."
It was not so with David. He thought it a tragedy, at least for a
while. Even when it had failed him, when it had refused to shine in
darkness, itself turned upon him in an hour of need, he had not lost
faith in love. He had said in his heart, "At least I have love left,
which is worth while in itself; and having that, I can yet work out
some sort of happiness for us all." He had clung desperately to that
hope, though the evidence was against it.
He had been clinging to an illusion. When he found that out, he had
nothing left. He was bewildered by the task of working out a happiness
where no love was. How could he rebuild when he had not even wreckage
with which to build?
He went to live at the boarding-house where he had been taking his
meals, a dingy cheerless establishment that had but the one merit of
cheapness. He spent his evenings there alone, smoking too much,
reading or working for Dick Holden. The cheap tobacco burned his
tongue and the loneliness, more than ever, ate into his soul. He
thought of going out to call on the Jim Blaisdells or for dinners with
the men he had used to know. But he shrank from that because he
supposed his old friends must be saying, "That David Quentin--poor
Davy!--has quite petered out, hasn't he?" As probably they were.
He had sense enough to understand that these nights were not good for
him.
"As far as I know, I've got to exist a good many years yet and make a
living for myself and Shirley and Davy Junior. So I mustn't let myself
get into this sort of a rut. I must hunt up a more cheerful place to
stay."
When a love is dead, it is dead, and there's an end to it. After a
decent period of mourning you get used to the fact. . . .
The office, after all, was not so unbearably prison-like. There was
the balm of friendship--a double friendship--which is good for the
self-respect of a man. And there was the work, with which he was
growing more familiar and which, therefore, was more easily and quickly
and better done. At his own suggestion the scope of his duties had
been broadened; and he borrowed books from the library and tried to
study out schemes to systematize Jonathan's business. Some of these
schemes were not wholly absurd and one or two were adopted, which
pleased Jonathan far more than David. Strictly speaking, David was not
putting his heart into his work, but he was giving fidelity and a
desire to do his best; and he was getting back, perhaps not happiness,
but at least a measure of the honest workman's best reward. So that
Jonathan's theorem was given a partial demonstration. Jonathan saw.
"Mother," he said one evening, "I am more than a little ashamed. I
took David Quentin into the office because Mr. Blaisdell said he was
badly in need of a position and nothing else offered. I'm afraid I
thought it a charity and was rather patronizing at first. I'm afraid,"
Jonathan sighed, "I am puffed up at times by my charities, which don't
amount to so much, after all."
"We are not required to be _too_ humble," she reminded him. "Why are
you ashamed just now?"
"It wasn't charity at all. David is really a very capable man and a
hard worker. He more than earns his salary--I'll have to raise that
very soon. I can't understand how he failed as an architect."
"Perhaps he didn't have the right talent. I understand architecture is
a very difficult profession."
"It is a noble art," said Jonathan, "and very few men have the talent.
That must be the explanation, though I've looked up some of his work
and it seems quite as good as that of many architects I know. But I
find it hard not to be glad that he was forced to come to me. He is
the most likable man I have ever met."
"He seems attractive," said his mother, less sweepingly, "and has
excellent manners. He is good-looking, is he not?"
"Very." Jonathan winced. "He is just what a man would like to be.
And I never had a friendship that meant quite so much to me."
"Has he displaced Miss Summers?"
"Miss Summers," said Jonathan, "is--different. What shall I read
to-night--_Earnest Maltravers_?"
Boarding-houses that are both good and cheap are not easy to find.
David took his problem to Esther Summers. It made an excuse for a
minute's chat. He liked to watch the dancing lights in those
expressive gray eyes.
"Do you happen to know of any pretty good boarding-house? I say
_pretty_ good, because it has to be pretty cheap, too. The place I'm
at now is a nightmare. They're always frying onions. And the
star-boarder is a haberdashery clerk. He looks like an advertisement
of ready-made clothes and talks out of the side of his mouth in what he
thinks is an English accent. He's always talking to me about the
squabs on his staff."
"What is a squab?" she asked.
"I'm not quite sure, but I think it's a wholly imaginary creature much
taken by the charms of haberdashery clerks."
"I see. I don't think of any place now. Unless--" She hesitated
doubtfully.
"Unless what?"
"My aunt has a third-story room that is empty. It's a very nice room,
though it isn't furnished now. There are only two other roomers, who
are very quiet and never bother any one. We never fry onions and there
is a pretty good boarding-house only a block away. You could get your
meals there."
"It sounds like the very thing. I could furnish the room myself with
some of my stuff that's in storage. And-- Do you happen to live
there?"
"I happen to. Of course, if that's an objection--" She laughed.
"Would you let me set my door on a crack when you sing?"
She nodded. "Since you'd probably do it anyhow!"
"Then I think I could waive that objection. Would you mind speaking to
your aunt about it?"
"This very night," she said.
That is how David went to live under the same roof that sheltered
Esther Summers.
It seemed a harmless arrangement. He saw her very rarely there. In
the morning he left the house before she did, at the end of the day
stayed longer at the office; not by intention but because his work
called for longer hours. In the evening she stayed with her faded old
aunt in their part of the house. The other roomers were as quiet and
exclusive as the prospectus had promised. So David, in his new
quarters--pleasant enough once his things had been installed--was left
alone with his books, his letters to Shirley and his work for the
successful Dick Holden.
But there was something in that house--not to be accounted for by mere
creature comforts--that made it easier to fight off the blue devils of
loneliness and took away a little of the reminder's stings when some
tantalizing shape appeared in his tobacco clouds. Every morning he was
awakened by her voice at the piano, a few minutes of scales and then
one song, always a true matin song, full of hope and the sheer joy of
living. In the evening she sang again, a little longer at scales and
another song, sometimes two. Then David's door would be set on a crack
and he would lean back in his chair, listening and thrilling with some
emotion as vague but as beautiful as a very good idea in ecclesiastical
architecture. Sometimes a film would come over his eyes; it is not
clear why, for when she sang he forgot to remember that he was a
failure, that he was in mourning for a love lately dead and that he had
become a mere drudge for money.
One evening when he had been under that roof for nearly three weeks she
did not stop with the second or even the third song. Ballads and arias
followed until she had sung steadily for more than an hour. Wondering,
David stole from his room and sat with the other roomers on the stairs,
listening raptly to the golden voice that floated up to them. And not
once did it falter or lose its pure timbre.
Silence fell at last. The other roomers, sighing, went back to their
rooms. David went down to the parlor.
The singer was still sitting before the piano, absent eyes fixed on the
open sheet of music; a happy but half-incredulous smile was playing
about her lips. It became a friendly welcoming smile when she saw him
at the door.
"Did you like my little concert?"
"Like it!" He used a gesture to explain that she had set too big a
task for his tongue.
Her cheeks made answer.
"Do you know," he asked abruptly, "that your voice is getting better
and stronger all the time?"
"I think so," she said quietly.
"Don't you think that maybe your throat is getting well?"
"I think so. But I can't be sure. It's too soon to tell yet. And
it's too good to be true."
"Oh, no!" he protested. "You mustn't say that. You mustn't _think_--"
He stopped with a curt laugh. "That's queer advice from me."
"But it's very good advice--for any one, I am sure." Her eyes had
become very grave. "And I shouldn't have said that, for it really
doesn't matter so much as it did once. You see, I was pretty cowardly
about it at first, when I found I couldn't depend on my voice. Because
I couldn't have all I wanted I wouldn't have anything at all. For two
years I wouldn't sing a note. The doctor says the long rest is what
gives me a chance now, but I don't deserve that. I made myself
foolishly unhappy. But it's different now. Even if I can't go back to
studying or ever hope to do big things, I know I can sing a little for
myself and get a great deal of happiness out of that."
It may be that her smile was a little too bright.
"Do you really mean that?" he asked. "Or are you only whistling again
to keep up your courage?"
"If I'm only whistling--why, please let me whistle. But I think I do
mean it. It's very sound philosophy. Even if the lame duckling can't
fly, is there any reason why it shouldn't waddle for the fun of it?"
And now the smile was just as it should have been.
David considered that. For some reason hidden from her his cheeks were
burning; you would have said that he was ashamed again.
"No reason at all," he said at last, "if the duckling happens to be
very brave. But I hope she is going to fly very high and very far."
And with that he left her, more abruptly than was polite. She would
have been glad to have him stay longer.
For many minutes she sat there by the piano, thinking not of the gift
that seemed to be coming back, but of the queer lame duck who took his
lameness so much to heart. She saw no harm in such employment. She
wished she were a fairy godmother, so that she could by a wave of her
wand make his wings whole once more.
Up in his room David, too, was thinking earnestly. After a long while
he rose from his chair, set up the easel and began to work, not on a
pretty-pretty picture for Dick Holden, but on an idea of his own that
lately had been haunting him.
That became a habit in his spare hours.
Swiftly the new idea took form, as the flower grows in the field,
without travail or effort. He worked harder than ever at Jonathan's
drawings those days--hot lazy days they were, too--to earn release a
half-hour earlier; and he swallowed his dinners more hastily than was
wise. Then, when no hack work for Dick Holden was to be done, he sat
at his easel sketching until the clock struck an hour--more often
two--after midnight. Esther's aunt was a model landlady and had
nothing to say about extravagance in gas.
He did not pat himself with the remark, "They will have to come to me
yet." He never even thought of that. Neither did he say, "I am doing
a big thing," having no opinion at all as to whether the thing was
little or big. But he whistled sometimes as he worked, quite softly,
and he went to bed always in a warm mellow glow that merged easily into
sound restful sleep. In the morning he awoke ready, even eager, for
the new day.
He even took some pleasure in his work for Dick Holden. It was Dick
who gave him a bit of interesting news. David had called that noon to
get data for some plans Dick wanted him to make.
"I could do them myself," the latter explained. "But I'm loafing this
summer. I'm in town only because there's talk that St. Mark's is going
to build."
David did not wince. "And to pay tribute into your coffers?"
"That's what I'm here for," grinned Dick.
"And what are you going to give them?"
"_I_ don't know." Dick waved a confident hand. "Whatever they want."
"I'm working out an idea," David suggested a little timidly, "that
maybe you can use. Drop around to my room some time and I'll show it
to you."
"Why, yes, I'll drop around some time," rather too carelessly said
Dick, who was no longer so thoughtful in little things. Too much
success seemed to be going to his head.
David flushed and dropped the subject. Dick, too, dropped it, both
from tongue and mind.
A few evenings later, while David was working on his new idea, violin
strains rose from the parlor. But he did not go down or join his
fellow roomers on the stairs, though Jonathan and Esther made music
until the evening was no longer young. It was a good hour for work;
the harmonies from below awoke other harmonies in his heart and
clarified his vision. That evening he completed a first sketch of the
interior: the picture you get looking toward the altar from a point
well back in the nave. It was good even as a sketch, for he had seen
very clearly and worked eagerly.
When it was finished he sat back and looked at it for a long time while
the music from the parlor flooded up to him. But he saw not a sketch.
He was back in a simpler age when the symbols of faith had power;
seeing with a new understanding a picture that had formed in his mind
as he worked out this creation--for him it was already created. . . .
A narrow crooked street, filled by a gay colorful throng that slackened
its pace and lowered its voice before a gray, weathered old church. A
beggar crouching on the steps, mouthing his whining song. A constant
stream of worshipers passing in and out through the great open door:
plumed cavaliers, their arrogant swagger for the nonce put off; gray
pilgrims, weary and dusty, with blistered feet and splintered staves;
mailed soldiers ready to march for the wars; tired-eyed crusaders home
from a futile quest; a haughty lady, a troubled daughter of artisans, a
faded wanton, brought into a brief gentle sisterhood by a common need;
all seeking the same thing. And perhaps in the doorway a faltering
sinner unconfessed, fear of punishment a flaming sword in his
path. . . . Ah, well! It was not so absurd, that picture. For those
seekers have even unto this day their children who, amid their
pleasuring and warring and questing, sometimes grow faint and would
rest.
In such company he entered. On the threshold they paused with a quick
breath for the chaste beauty of vista and line, the soft play of color
and shadow. Then sense of beauty faded before a thing that eye can not
see nor tongue express, what the seekers had needed and what they
found: peace, passing understanding, unseen but undoubted; hovering
above them in the noble nave, kneeling with them in shadowy aisle,
winging toward them on the shaft of sunshine streaming from heaven
itself upon the altar. Here, for intrigant and ravager, penitent and
saint, failure and world-weary, was sanctuary--respite, if only for an
hour, from sin and strife, passion and hate and self. It was good to
stay there a while, humbled yet uplifted, aspiring anew. For there was
a Presence in His own house.
A wonderful thing had happened to David Quentin. His sensitive
quivering heart had caught and recorded the great human need, and to
him it had been given to build a rest house for many weary and poor in
heart. Perhaps if his commonplace little trials had not seemed big and
tragic to him, he never could have known the need and so he never would
have written in stone and wood the story of sanctuary that has meant so
much to the ages.
He did not foresee that. He did not think of it as a possibility. He
was thinking only of the great discovery he had made: that a man may
find sanctuary, as he may give worship, in a task well loved and well
done. Life was a pretty good thing after all, since it could not take
from him eyes to perceive or heart to rejoice in the beauty he could
create, though none else cared to see. The days of his whimpering,
even to himself, were ended.
"I should have been doing this all along."
Nor did he notice that the music had ceased. He did not know even that
he was no longer alone, until a voice broke in on his reverie.
"He doesn't look very hospitable, does he?"
"Maybe," said another, "he doesn't feel that way."
David jumped to his feet and peered over the easel at Jonathan and
Esther.
"But he does, indeed. Visitors," he announced, "are requested to stay
on this side of the door."
They stepped within. "Since you wouldn't come down," Jonathan
explained, "of course we had to come up. Though Miss Summers almost
lost her courage on the way. She said we were taking a liberty."
"But I didn't," she protested in some confusion. "I only said--"
"That you don't seem to care much for company," Jonathan completed her
sentence. "She was mistaken, I trust?"
"Woefully," smiled David. "And I've had company all evening. They
played and sang and helped me to work." He waved a hand toward the
easel.
"Do you think," Jonathan inquired of Esther, "we may take that as a
compliment?"
"I'm not quite sure," she answered.
"She means," chuckled Jonathan, who seemed to be enjoying himself
hugely, "she must see the work before she commits herself. Is it
allowed--?"
"Of course, if you care to," David said. "And you'll find these chairs
comfortable, I think. Over here, where you get the light." When they
had sat down, he turned the easel toward them. "Now, ladies and
gentlemen," he burlesqued, "if you will look upon my right--"
They looked. And their sudden surprised interest made his heart skip a
beat.
"Why, I--I didn't know--" Esther began, in the words he had once
stammered to her. She gave him a quick questioning glance, then looked
again at the sketch.
Jonathan had become very grave. "You have a gift for drawing."
"Only a knack," said David.
"A very pretty knack then. Is that a copy?"
"Just a sketch of an idea I've been trying to work out lately. This,"
David placed another drawing on the easel, "is about what it would be
like outside."
"It is," said Esther, "like seeing music."
Jonathan studied that drawing for several silent minutes.
"You keep up your professional work as a side issue?" he asked abruptly.
"Oh, no! But sometimes I--waddle for the fun of it. Under advice,"
David smiled at Esther, "of a very good fairy."
Jonathan did not understand that saying, but he thought from her color
he could guess the fairy's name.
"And very good advice, too. Have you done any other ecclesiastical
work?"
"Why, that," laughed David, "I used to think was my mission in life."
"Is there anything else you could show us?"
"I have a set of drawings I submitted to St. Christopher's last spring.
They're all that escaped a general destruction when I took down my
shingle."
David got the plans from a closet, unrolled them and placed the
illustrative sketches before his visitors. Jonathan studied these
drawings, too, very carefully.
"St. Christopher's, you say?" he said at last. "But I don't
understand. I happen to have seen the plans they accepted. I don't
know very much about architecture technically, but I should say yours
are better--manifestly better. Am I right?"
"They weren't what St. Christopher's wanted."
"But they are better, aren't they?"
"I think they are," said David quietly.
"But I believe I like the new idea even better. Am I right again?"
"I suppose it is better in a way. It's less pretentious and
spectacular, but has more warmth--more meaning, I suppose."
David tried to speak casually, but excitement was mounting. He caught
up the new sketches and compared them eagerly with the old, forgetting
for the moment what St. Christopher's had meant to him. And he saw the
new idea as he had not seen it before.
"It _is_ better," he muttered. "I--I hadn't realized."
"David!" It was hard to believe that Jonathan could be so stern. "You
are a fraud. You came to me under false pretenses. You gave me to
believe that you had been a failure."
"I was."
"You know better than that. Any man who can work out such things--!
For a very little I would give you your discharge this moment."
"But I beg of you--Mr. Radbourne, you don't know what my position means
to me--"
"I didn't mean that seriously, of course. But you ought to be back in
your own work. Why did you ever leave it?"
"Because I couldn't make a good enough living." David flushed as he
said it. How pitifully poor, despite all his late philosophizing, that
reason sounded! "Mr. Radbourne, let us drop the subject."
But the shining-eyed Jonathan would not drop it.
"I think I can understand," he said gently. "Because it seemed the
best thing for others, you gave up the work you wanted to do and were
fitted to do. You didn't whine and you did my little drudgeries well
and patiently, as though they were the big things you would have done--"
"You don't understand. I did whine--"
"I never heard you. Miss Summers, we owe David an apology. We were
sorry for him!"
"Not now," she said.
"No, not now. David, how long will it take you to finish your new
plans?"
"But I'm not going to prepare plans. A few sketches for my own
amusement--that's all."
"I happen to know that St. Mark's is about to build."
"I am not interested, Mr. Radbourne."
"But I am. As a member of St. Mark's and as your friend, I am deeply
interested. How long will it take, David?"
David only shook his head.
"Man," cried Jonathan, "will you let one reverse--"
"Mr. Radbourne, I beg of you, don't urge that. It's all behind me.
I'm not fitted for the work as you think--drawing pretty sketches isn't
all of it. I--a man told me once, I haven't the punch. I don't know
how to meet competition. And it cost me something--it wasn't easy--to
get settled in other work. I don't want to get unsettled again, to
face another disappointment. I--"
David stopped. And Esther, watching him too closely to be conscious of
her own heart's eccentric behavior, saw in his eyes the hurt which
disappointment had left, and philosophy, even a very sound philosophy
as formulated by a lame duckling, had not yet fully healed. And she
saw indecision there, a longing that she understood, and a fear--
Of its own accord her hand went toward him in a quick pleading little
gesture. "You must!" she said softly. "Please!" . . .
Jonathan had left, beaming with joy, violin under one arm, a roll of
sketches under the other. They stood on the porch in an intimate
silence they saw no reason to break. A young half moon was sailing
over the city, dodging in and out among lazy white cloudlets. David
watched it and wondered if he and his friends had not been more than a
little foolish. He shrank from the thought of another defeat. He
shrank even from the thought of a victory; for, should it come now, it
would not be alone through his gift or any power that dwelt in him.
"I believe you're sorry you promised him."
He turned to the girl. The disappointment in her tone reached him.
"He isn't hard to read, is he? He's planning to--to pull wires for me.
He won't trust my work to win out."
"Ah! I was hoping you wouldn't think of that."
"I can't help it. It sticks out--you've thought of it yourself. Do
you think it is a foolish pride?"
"Not foolish!" she answered quickly. "And not just pride, I think.
It's hard to realize that good work isn't always enough."
"Then you don't think me--temperamental?"
"I think you are--honest. But after all, there's no real dishonesty if
you do good work. And I think"--there was a sudden return to her old
shyness--"I think, if you win out, your great reward will be the good
work you have done."
"How do you know that?"
"If it weren't true you wouldn't have made those sketches."
And he knew a quick stirring of gratitude that he had found this girl
who understood so well, who saw the verities as he saw them and had
neither laugh nor sneer nor impatience for his finickiness.
"I wish," she went on, "it could come to you as you want it. But I am
glad it is coming--even though some one does pull wires to bring it to
you."
"But the wires may not work. I've got to remember that others may not
see my work as you and he do."
"That is possible," she said. "What of that?"
"I can try again, you mean? I suppose I can do that. I think I will
do that, as I can. And probably, if I turn out work that's worth
while, some day my chance will come. If I don't--why, there are other
things to do, and if you put your heart into them you can get happiness
out of them. Do you mind if I plagiarize a bit?"
"I don't mind at all," she smiled.
"And I've got to remember that, win or lose, I owe a lot to you and
him. He doesn't understand what a quitter I was when I came to his
office. I'd turned sour. I thought, because things hadn't gone the
way I wanted, I'd been hardly used."
"I know how that feels," she said.
"The truth was--" Moonlight loosens tongues that by day are tied fast.
"The truth was, I'd had the best luck in the world. I'd met him--and
you. You went out of your way to make things pleasant for me, a
stranger. And by just being yourselves you shamed me into looking at
things from your point of view. It's a very good point of view. I'd
rather have it now, I think, than build all the churches in
Christendom."
The moonlight revealed the friendliness in her eyes. He could not
fight down a new thrilling faith in his gift, in himself, in his
strength to stand straight though he should fail again.
"You'd have found it by yourself," she said. "If you'd really been a
quitter, if it hadn't been in you, you couldn't have found it, even
through him. But I know how you feel. I feel the same way toward him.
_Isn't_ he the dear, funny little man?"
And that opened a fertile and profitable field. Jonathan's ears must
have burned a long while that night.