and my plants were twisted and my roses never bloomed. For all my
fighting, the weeds grew thicker. I could not learn to make the good
things grow, I tried to work rightly, Lord, my Master, but I must have
done it all wrong."
And as he stood sorrowful, with no harvest sheaves to offer as witnesses
for his toiling, suddenly back of him he heard a marvellous, many-toned,
soft whirring, as of innumerable light wings, and over his head flew a
countless crowd of silver-white birds, and floated in the air beyond.
And as he gazed, surprised, at their loveliness, without speech again it
was said to him:
"My child, these are your witnesses. These are the thoughts and the
influences which have gone from your mind to other minds through the
years of your life." And they were all pure white.
And it was borne in upon him, as if a bandage had been lifted from his
eyes, that character was what mattered in the great end; that success,
riches, environment, intellect, even, were but the tools the master gave
into his servants' hands, and that the honesty of the work was all they
must answer for. And again he lifted his eyes to the hovering white
birds, and with a great thrill of joy it came to him that he had his
offering, too, he had this lovely multitude for a gift to the Master;
and, as if the thought had clothed him with glory, he saw his poor black
clothes suddenly transfigured to shining garments, and, with a shock, he
felt the rush of a long-forgotten feeling, the feeling of youth and
strength, beating in a warm glow through his veins. With a sigh of deep
happiness, the old man awoke.
A log had fallen, and turning as it fell, the new surface had caught
life from the half-dead ashes, and had blazed up brightly, and the
warmth was penetrating gratefully through him. The old clergyman
smiled, and held his thin hands to the flame as he gazed into the fire,
but the wonder and awe of his dream were in his eyes.
"My beautiful white birds!" he said, aloud, but softly. "Mine! They were
out of sight, but they were there all the time. Surely the dream was
sent from Heaven--surely the Lord means me to believe that my life has
been of service after all." And as he still gazed, with rapt face, into
his study fire, he whispered: "Angels came and ministered unto him."
THE DIAMOND BROOCHES
The room was filled with signs of breeding and cultivation; it was
bare of the things which mean money. Books were everywhere; family
portraits, gone brown with time, hung on the walls; a tall silver
candlestick gleamed from a corner; there was the tarnished gold of
carved Florentine frames, such as people bring still from Italy. But
the furniture-covering was faded, the carpet had been turned, the
place itself was the small parlor of a cheap apartment, and the
wall-paper was atrocious. The least thoughtful, listening for a moment
to that language which a room speaks of those who live in it, would
have known this at once as the home of well-bred people who were very
poor.
So quiet it was that it seemed empty. If an observer had stood in the
doorway, it might have been a minute before he saw that a man sat in
front of the fireless hearth with his arms stretched before him on the
table and his head fallen into them. For many minutes there was no
sound, no stir of the man's nerveless pose; it might have been that he
was asleep. Suddenly the characterless silence of the place was flooded
with tragedy, for the man groaned, and a child would have known that the
sound came from a torn soul. He lifted his face--a handsome, high-bred
face, clever, a bit weak,--and tears were wet on his cheeks. He glanced
about as if fearing to be seen as he wiped them away, and at the moment
there was a light bustle, low voices down the hall. The young man sprang
to his feet and stood alert as a step came toward him. He caught a sharp
breath as another man, iron-gray, professional, stood in the doorway.
"Doctor! You have made the examination--you think--" he flung at the
newcomer, and the other answered with the cool incisive manner of one
whose words weigh.
"Mr. Newbold," he said, "when you came to my office this morning I told
you my conjectures and my fear. I need not, therefore, go into details
again. I am very sorry to have to say to you--" he stopped, and looked
at the younger man kindly. "I wish I might make it easier, but it is
better that I should tell you that your mother's condition is as I
expected."
Newbold gave way a step as if under a blow, and his color went gray. The
doctor had seen souls laid bare before, yet he turned his eyes to the
floor as the muscles pulled and strained in this young face. It seemed
minutes that the two faced each other in the loaded silence, the doctor
gazing gravely at the worn carpet, the other struggling for
self-control. At last Newbold spoke, in the harsh tone which often comes
first after great emotion.
"You mean that there is--no hope?"
And the doctor, relieved at the loosening of the tension, answered
readily, glad to merge his humanity in his professional capacity: "No,
Mr. Newbold; I do not mean just that. It is this bleak climate, the raw
winds from the lake, which make it impossible for your mother to take
the first step which might lead to recovery. There is, in fact--" he
hesitated. "I may say that there is no hope for her cure while here. But
if she is taken to a warm climate at once--at once--within two
weeks--and kept there until summer, then, although I have not the gift
of prophecy, yet I believe she would be in time a well woman. No
medicine, can do it, but out-of-doors and warmth would do it--probably."
He put out his hand with a smile. "I am indeed glad that I may temper
judgment with mercy," he said. "Try the south, Mr. Newbold,--try
Bermuda, for instance. The sea air and the warmth there might set your
mother up marvellously." And as the young man stared at him
unresponsively he gave a grasp to the hand he held, and turning, found
his way out alone. He stumbled down the dark steps of the third-rate
apartment-house and into his brougham, and as the rubber tires bowled
him over the asphalt he communed with himself:
"Queer about those Newbolds. Badly off, of course, to live in that
place, yet they know what it means to call me in. There must be some
money. I wonder if they have enough for a trip, poor souls. Bah! they
must have--everybody has when it comes to life and death. They'll get it
somehow--rich relations and all that. Burr Claflin is their cousin, I
know. David Newbold himself was rich enough five years ago, when he made
that unlucky gamble in stocks--which killed him, they say. Well--life is
certainly hard." And the doctor turned his mind to a new pair of horses
he had been looking at in the afternoon, with a comfortable sense of a
wind-guard or so, at the least, between himself and the gales of
adversity.
In the little drawing-room, with its cheap paper and its old portraits,
Randolph Newbold faced his sister with the news. He knew her courage,
yet, even in the stress of his feeling, he wondered at it now; he felt
almost a pang of jealousy when he saw her take the blow as he had not
been able to take it.
"It is a death-sentence," he said, brokenly. "We have not the money to
send her south, and we cannot get it."
Katherine Newbold's hands clenched. "We will get it," she said. "I don't
know how just now, but we'll get it, Randolph. Mother's life shall not
go for lack of a few hundred dollars. Oh, think--just think--six years
ago it would have meant nothing. We went south every winter, and we
were all well. It is too cruel! But we'll get the money--you'll see."
"How?" the young man asked, bitterly. "The last jewel went so that we
could have Dr. Renfrew. There's nothing here to sell--nobody would buy
our ancestors," and he looked up mournfully at the painted figures on
the wall. The very thought seemed an indignity to those stately
personalities--the English judge in his wig, the colonial general in his
buff-faced uniform, harbored for a century proudly among their own, now
speculated upon as possible revenue. The girl put up a hand toward them
as if deprecating her brother's words, and his voice went on: "You know
the doctor practically told me this morning. I have had no hope all day,
and all day I have lived in hell. I don't know how I did my work.
To-night, coming home, I walked past Litterny's. The windows were
lighted and filled with a gorgeous lot of stones--there were a dozen big
diamond brooches. I stopped and looked at them, and thought how she used
to wear such things, and how now her life was going for the value of
one of them, and--you may be horrified, Katherine, but this is true: If
I could have broken into that window and snatched some of that stuff,
I'd have done it. Honesty and all I've been brought up to would have
meant nothing--nothing. I'd do it now, in a second, if I could, to get
the money to save my mother. God! The town is swimming in money, and I
can't get a little to keep her alive!"
The young man's eyes were wild with a passion of helplessness, but his
sister gazed at him calmly, as if considering a question. From a room
beyond came a painful cough, and the girl was on her feet.
"She is awake; I must go to her. But I shall think--don't be hopeless,
boy--I shall think of a way." And she was gone.
Worn out with emotion, Randolph Newbold was sleeping a deep sleep that
night. With a start he awoke, staring at a white figure with long, fair
braids.
"Randolph, it's I--Katherine. Don't be startled."
"What's the matter? Is she worse?" He lifted himself anxiously,
blinking sleep from his eyes.
"No--oh no! She's sleeping well. It's just that I have to talk to you,
Randolph. Now. I can't wait till morning--you'll understand when I tell
you. I haven't been asleep at all; I've been thinking. I know now how we
can get the money."
"Katherine, are you raving?" the brother demanded; but the girl was not
to be turned aside.
"Listen to me," she said, and in her tone was the authority of the
stronger personality, and the young man listened. She sat on the edge of
his bed and held his hand as she talked, and through their lives neither
might ever forget that midnight council.
* * * * *
The room had an air of having come in perfect and luxurious condition,
fur-lined and jewel-clasped, as it were, from the hands of a good
decorator, and of having stopped at that. The great triple lamp glowed
green as if set with gigantic emeralds; and its soft light shone on a
scheme of color full of charm for the eye. The stuffs, the woodwork,
were of a delightful harmony, but it seemed that the books and the
pictures were chosen to match them. The man talking, in the great carved
armchair by the fire, fitted the place. His vigorous, pleasant face
looked prosperous, and so kindly was his air that one might not cavil at
a lack of subtler qualities. He drew a long breath as he brought out the
last words of the story he was telling.
"And that, Mr. North," he concluded, "is the way the firm of Litterny
Brothers, the leading jewellers of this city, were done yesterday by a
person or persons unknown, to the tune of five thousand dollars." His
eyes turned from the blazing logs to his guest.
The young man in his clerical dress stood as he listened, with eyes wide
like a child's, fixed on the speaker. He stooped and picked up a poker
and pushed the logs together as he answered. The deliberateness of the
action would not have prepared one for the intensity of his words. "I
never wanted to be a detective before," he said, "but I'd give a good
deal to catch the man who did that. It was such planned rascality, such
keen-witted scoundrelism, that it gives me a fierce desire to show him
up. I'd like to teach the beggar that honesty can be as intelligent as
knavery; that in spite of his strength of cunning, law and right are
stronger. I wish I could catch him," and the brass poker gleamed in a
savage flourish. "I'd have no mercy. The hungry wretch who steals meat,
the ignorant sinner taught to sin from babyhood--I have infinite
patience for such. But this thief spoke like a gentleman, and the maid
said he was 'a pretty young man'--there's no excuse for him. He simply
wanted money that wasn't his,--there's no excuse. It makes my blood boil
to think of a clever rascal like that succeeding in his rascality." With
that the intense manner had dropped from him as a garment, and he was
smiling the gentlest, most whimsical smile at the older man. "You'll
think, Mr. Litterny, that it's the loss of my new parish-house that's
making me so ferocious, but, honestly, I'd forgotten all about it." And
no one who heard him could doubt his sincerity. "I was thinking of the
case from your point of view. As to the parish-house, it's a
disappointment, but of course I know that a large loss like this must
make a difference in a man's expenditures. You have been very good to
St. John's already,--a great many times you have been good to us."
"It's a disappointment to me as well," Litterny said. "Old St. John's of
Newburyport has been dear to me many years. I was confirmed and married
there--but _you_ know. Everything I could do for it has been a
satisfaction. And I looked forward to giving this parish-house. In
ordinary years a theft of five thousand dollars would not have prevented
me, but there have been complications and large expenses of late, to
which this loss is the last straw. I shall have to postpone the
parish-house,--but it shall be only postponed, Mr. North, only
postponed."
The young rector answered quietly: "As I said before, Mr. Litterny, you
have been most generous. We are grateful more than I know how to say."
His manner was very winning, and the older man's kind face brightened.
"The greatest luxury which money brings is to give it away. St. John's
owes its thanks not to me, but to you, Mr. North. I have meant for some
time to put into words my appreciation of your work there. In two years
you have infused more life and earnestness into that sleepy parish than
I thought possible. You've waked them up, put energy into them, and got
it out of them. You've done wonders. It's right you should know that
people think this of you, and that your work is valued."
"I am glad," Norman North said, and the restraint of the words carried
more than a speech.
Mr. Litterny went on: "But there's such a thing as overdoing, young man,
and you're shaving the edge of it. You're looking ill--poor color--thin
as a rail. You need a rest."
"I think I'll go to Bermuda. My senior warden was there last year, and
he says it's a wonderful little place--full of flowers and tennis and
sailing, and blue sea and nice people." He stood up suddenly and
broadened his broad shoulders. "I love the south," he said. "And I love
out-of-doors and using my muscles. It's good to think of whole days
with no responsibility, and with exercise till my arms and legs ache. I
get little exercise, and I miss it. I was on the track team at Yale, you
see, and rather strong at tennis."
Mr. Litterny smiled, and his smile was full of sympathy. "We try to make
a stained-glass saint out of you," he said, "and all the time you're a
human youngster with a human desire for a good time. A mere lad," he
added, reflectively, and went on: "Go down to Bermuda with a light
heart, my boy, and enjoy yourself,--it will do your church as much good
as you. Play tennis and sail--fall in love if you find the right
girl,--nothing makes a man over like that." North was putting out his
hand. "And remember," Litterny added, "to keep an eye out for my thief.
You're retained as assistant detective in the case."
* * * * *
On a bright, windy morning a steamship wound its careful way through the
twisted water-road of Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda. Up from cabins mid
corners poured figures unknown to the decks during the passage, and
haggard faces brightened under the balmy breeze, and tired eyes smiled
at the dark hills and snowy sands of the sliding shore. In a sheltered
corner of the deck a woman lay back in a chair and drew in breaths of
soft air, and a tall girl watched her.
"You feel better already, don't you?" she demanded, and Mrs. Newbold put
her hand into her daughter's.
"It is Paradise," she said. "I am going to get well."
In an hour the landing had been made, the custom-house passed; the gay,
exhilarating little drive had been taken to the hotel, through white
streets, past white-roofed houses buried in trees and flowers and vines;
the sick woman lay quiet and happy on her bed, drawn to the open window,
where the healing of the breeze touched her gently, and where her eyes
dreamed over a fairy stretch of sea and islands. Katherine, moving about
the room, unpacking, came to sit in a chair by her mother and talk to
her for a moment.
"To-morrow, if you're a good child, you shall go for a drive. Think--a
drive in an enchanted island. It's Shakespeare's _Tempest_ island,--did
I tell you I heard that on the boat? We might run across Caliban any
minute, and I think at least we'll find 'M' and 'F', for Miranda and
Ferdinand, cut into the bark of a tree somewhere. We'll go for a drive
every day, every single day, till we find it. You'll see."
Mrs. Newbold's eyes moved from the sea and rested, perplexed, on her
daughter. "Katherine, how can we afford to drive every day? How can we
be here at all? I don't understand it. I'm sure there was nothing left
to sell except the land out west, and Mr. Seaton told us last spring
that it was worthless. How did you and Randolph conjure up the money for
this beautiful journey that is going to save my life?"
The girl bent impulsively and kissed her with tender roughness. "It is
going to do that--it is!" she cried, and her voice broke. Then: "Never
mind how the money came, dear,--invalids mustn't be curious. It strains
their nerves. Wait till you're well and perhaps you'll hear a tale about
that land out west."
Day after day slipped past in the lotus-eating land whose unreality
makes it almost a change of planets from every-day America. Each day
brought health with great rapidity, and soon each day brought new
friends. Mrs. Newbold was full of charm, and the devotion between the
ill mother and the blooming daughter was an attractive sight. Yet the
girl was not light-hearted. Often the mother, waking in the night, heard
a shivering sigh through the open door between their rooms; often she
surprised a harassed look in the young eyes which, with all that the
family had gone through, was new to them. But Katherine laughed at
questions, and threw herself so gayly into the pleasures which came to
her that Mrs. Newbold, too happy to be analytical, let the straws pass
and the wind blow where it would.
There came a balmy morning when the two were to take, with half a dozen
others, the long drive to St. George's. The three carriage-loads set off
in a pleasant hubbub from the white-paved courtyard of the hotel, and as
Katherine settled her mother with much care and many rugs, her camera
dropped under the wheels. Everybody was busy, nobody was looking, and
she stooped and reached for it in vain. Then out of a blue sky a voice
said:
"I'll get it for you," She was pushed firmly aside and a figure in a
blue coat was grovelling adventurously beneath the trap. It came out,
straightened; she had her camera; she was staring up into a face which
contemplated her, which startled her, so radiant, so everything
desirable it seemed to her to be. The man's eyes considered her a moment
as she thanked him, and then he had lifted his hat and was gone,
running, like a boy in a hurry for a holiday, toward the white stone
landing. An empty sail flopped big at the landing, and the girl stood
and looked as he sprang in under it and took the rudder. Joe, the head
porter, the familiar friend of every one, was stowing in a rug.
"That gen'l'man's the Reverend Norman North,--he come by the _Trinidad_
last Wednesday; he's sailin' to St. George's," Joe volunteered. "Don't
look much like a reverend, do he?" And with that the carriage had
started.
Seeing the sights at St. George's, they came to the small old church,
on its western side a huge flight of steps, capped with a meek doorway;
on its eastern end a stone tower guarding statelily a flowery graveyard.
The moment the girl stepped inside, the spell of the bright peace which
filled the place caught her. The Sunday decorations were still there,
and hundreds of lilies bloomed from the pillars; sunshine slanted
through the simple stained glass and lay in colored patches on the
floor; there were square pews of a bygone day; there was a pulpit with a
winding stair; there were tablets on the walls to shipwrecked sailors,
to governors and officers dead here in harness. The clumsy woodwork, the
cheap carpets, the modest brasses, were in perfect order; there were
marks everywhere of reverent care.
"Let me stay," the girl begged. "I don't want to drive about. I want to
stay in this place. I'll meet you at the hotel for lunch, if you'll
leave me." And they left her.
The verger had gone, and she was quite alone. Deep in the shadow of a
gallery she slid to her knees and hid her face. "O God!" she
whispered,--"O God, forgive me!" And again the words seemed torn from
her--"O God, forgive me!"
There were voices in the vestibule, but the girl in the stress of her
prayer did not hear.
"Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to
our iniquities," she prayed, the accustomed words rushing to her want,
and she was suddenly aware that two people stood in the church. One of
them spoke.
"Don't bother to stay with me," he said, and in the voice, it seemed,
were the qualities that a man's speech should have--strength, certainty,
the unteachable tone of gentle blood, and beyond these the note of
personality, always indescribable, in this case carrying an appeal and
an authority oddly combined. "Don't stay with me. I like to be alone
here. I'm a clergyman, and I enjoy an old church like this. I'd like to
be alone in it," and a bit of silver flashed.
If the tip did it or the compelling voice, the verger murmured a word
about luncheon, was gone, and the girl in her dim corner saw, as the
other turned, that he was the rescuer of her camera, whose name was,
Joe had said and she remembered, Norman North. She was about to move, to
let herself be seen, when the young man knelt suddenly in the
old-fashioned front pew, as a good child might kneel who had been taught
the ways of his mother church, and bent his dark head. She waited
quietly while this servant spoke to his Master. There was no sound in
the silent, sun-lanced church, but outside one heard as from far away
the noises of the village. Katherine's eyes rested on the bowed head,
and she wondered uncertainly if she should let him know of her presence,
or if it might not be better to slip out unnoticed, when in a moment he
had risen and was swinging with a vigorous step up the little corkscrew
stairway of the pulpit. There he stood, facing the silence, facing the
flower-starred shadows, the empty spaces; facing her, but not seeing
her. And the girl forgot herself and the question of her going as she
saw the look in his face, the light which comes at times to those who
give their lives to holiness, since the day when the people, gazing at
Stephen, the martyr, "saw his face as it had been the face of an
angel." When his voice floated out on the dim, sunny atmosphere it
rested as lightly on the silence as if the notes of an organ rolled
through its own place. He spoke a prayer of a service which, to those
whose babyhood has been consecrated by it, whose childhood and youth
have listened to its simple and stately words, whose manhood and
womanhood have been carried over many a hard place by the lift of its
familiar sentences,--he spoke a prayer of that service which is less
dear only, to those bred in it, than the voices of their dearest. As a
priest begins to speak to his congregation he began, and the hearer in
the shadow of the gallery listened, awed:
"The Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before
Him."
And in the little church was silence as if all the earth obeyed. The
collect for the day came next, and a bit of jubilant Easter service, and
then his mind seemed to drift back to the sentences with which the
prayer-book opens.