"Let us rejoice and be glad in it." And then, stabbing into the girl's
fevered conscience, "I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever
before me." It was as if an inflexible judge spoke the words for her.
"When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, and doeth that
which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive," the pure,
stern tones went on.
She was not turning away from wickedness; she did not mean to turn away;
she would not do that which was lawful. The girl shivered. She could not
hear this dreadful accusal from the very pulpit. She must leave this
place. And with that the man, as if in a sudden passion of feeling, had
tossed his right hand high above him; his head was thrown back; his eyes
shone up into the shadows of the roof as if they would pierce material
things and see Him who reigned; he was pleading as if for his life,
pleading for his brothers, for human beings who sin and suffer.
"O Lord," he prayed, "spare all those who confess their sins unto Thee,
that they whose consciences by sin are accused, by Thy merciful pardon
may be absolved; through Christ our Lord." And suddenly he was using the
very words which had come to her of themselves a few minutes before.
"Deal not with us according to our sins--deal not with us," he repeated,
as if wresting forgiveness for his fellows from the Almighty. "Deal not
with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to our
iniquities." And while the echo of the words yet held the girl
motionless he was gone.
* * * * *
Down by the road which runs past the hotel, sunken ten feet below its
level, are the tennis-courts, and soldiers in scarlet and khaki, and
blue-jackets with floating ribbons, and negro bell-boys returning from
errands, and white-gowned American women with flowery hats, and men in
summer flannels stop as they pass, and sit on the low wall and watch the
games. There is always a gallery for the tennis-players. But on a
Tuesday morning about eleven o'clock the audience began to melt away in
disgust. Without doubt they were having plenty of amusement among
themselves, these tennis-players grouped at one side of the court and
filling the air with explosions of laughter. But the amusement of the
public was being neglected. Why in the world, being rubber-shod as to
the foot and racqueted as to the hand, did they not play tennis? A girl
in a short white dress, wearing white tennis-shoes and carrying a
racquet, came tripping down the flight of stone steps, and stopped as
she stood on the last landing and seemed to ask the same question. She
came slowly across the empty court, looking with curiosity at the bunch
of absorbed people, and presently she caught her breath. The man who was
the centre of the group, who was making, apparently, the amusement, was
the young clergyman, Norman North.
There was an outburst, a chorus of: "You can't have that one, Mr.
North!" "That's been used!" "That's Mr. Dennison's!"
A tall English officer--a fine, manly mixture of big muscles and fresh
color and khaki--looked up, saw the girl, and swung toward her. "Good
morning, Miss Newbold. Come and join the fun. Devil of a fellow, that
North,--they say he's a parson."
"What is it? What are they laughing at?" Katherine demanded.
"They're doing a Limerick tournament, which is what North calls the
game. Mr. Gale is timekeeper. They're to see which recites most rhymes
inside five minutes. The winner picks his court and plays with Miss
Lee."
Captain Comerford imparted this in jerky whispers, listening with one
ear all the time to a sound which stirred Katherine, the voice which she
had heard yesterday in the church at St. George's. The Englishman's
spasmodic growl stopped, and she drifted a step nearer, listening. As
she caught the words, her brows drew together with displeasure, with
shocked surprise. The inspired saint of yesterday was reciting with
earnestness, with every delicate inflection of his beautiful voice,
these words:
"There was a young curate of Kidderminster,
Who kindly, but firmly, chid a spinster,
Because on the ice
She said something not nice
When he quite inadvertently slid ag'inst her."
As the roar which followed this subsided, Katherine's face cleared.
What right had she to make a pattern of solemn righteousness for this
stranger and be insulted if he did not fit? Certainly he was
saintly--she had seen his soul bared to her vision; but certainly he was
human also, as this moment was demonstrating. It flashed over her
vaguely to wonder which was the dominant quality--which would rule in a
stress of temptation--the saintly side or the human? But at least he was
human with a winning humanity. His mirth and his enjoyment of it were as
spontaneous as a mischievous, bright child's, and it was easy to see
that the charm of his remarkable voice attracted others as it had
attracted her.
"There was a young fellow from Clyde,
Who was often at funerals espied--"
he had begun, and with that, between her first shock and her swift
recovery, with the contrast between the man of yesterday and the man of
to-day, Katherine suddenly laughed aloud. North stopped short, and
turned and looked at her, and for a second and their eyes met, and each
read recognition and friendliness. The Limerick went on:
"When asked who was dead,
He nodded and said,
'_I_ don't know--_I_ just came for the ride.'"
"Eleven for Mr. North--one-half minute more," called Mr. Gale, and
instantly North was in the breach:
"A sore-hipped hippopotamus quite flustered
Objected to a poultice made of custard;
'Can't you doctor up my hip
With anything but flip?'
So they put upon the hip a pot o' mustard.'"
And the half-minute was done and North had won, and there was clapping
of hands for the victor, and at once, before the little uproar was over,
Katherine saw him speak a word to Mr. Gale, and saw the latter, turning,
stare about as if searching for some one, and, meeting her glance,
smile.
"I want to present Mr. North, Miss Newbold," Gale said.
"Why did you laugh in the middle of my Limerick? Had you heard it?"
North demanded, as if they had known each other a year instead of a
minute.
"No, I had not heard it." Katherine shook her head.
"Then why did you laugh?"
She looked at him reflectively. "I don't know you well enough to tell
you that."
"How soon will you know me well enough--if I do my best?"
She considered. "About three weeks from yesterday."
* * * * *
Many things grow fast in southern climates--fruits, flowers, even
friendship and love. Three weeks later, on a hot, bright morning of
April, North and Katherine Newbold were walking down a road of Bermuda
to the sea, and between them was what had ripened in the twenty-one days
from a germ to a full-grown bud, ready to open at the lightest touch
into flower. As they walked down such a road of a dream, the man talked
to the girl as he had never talked to any one before. He spoke of his
work and its hopes and disappointments, of the pathos, the tragedy, the
comedy often of a way of life which leads by a deeper cut through men's
hearts than any other, and he told her also, modestly indeed, and
because he loved to tell her what meant much to him, of the joy of
knowing himself successful in his parish. He went into details,
absorbingly interesting to him, and this new luxury of speaking freely
carried him away.
"I hope I'm not boring you." His frank gaze turned on her anxiously. "I
don't know what right I have to assume that the increase in the
Sunday-school, or even the new brass pulpit, is a fascinating subject to
you. I never did this before," he said, and there was something in his
voice which hindered the girl from answering his glance. But there was
no air of being bored about her, and he went on. "However, life isn't
all good luck. I had a serious blow just before I came down here--a
queer thing happened. I told you just now that all the large gifts to
St. John's had come from one man--a former parishioner. The man was
James Litterny, of the great firm of--Why, what's the matter--what is
it?" For Katherine had stopped short, in her fast, swinging walk, and
without a sound had swayed and caught at the wall as if to keep herself
from falling. Before he could reach her she had straightened herself and
was smiling.
"I felt ill for a second--it's nothing,--let's go along."
North made eager suggestions for her comfort, but the girl was firm in
her assertion, that she was now quite well, so that, having no sisters
and being ignorant that a healthy young woman does not, any more than a
healthy young man, go white and stagger without reason, he yielded, and
they walked briskly on.
"You were telling me something that happened to you--something connected
with Mr.--with the rich parishioner." Her tone was steady and casual,
but looking at her, he saw that she was still pale.
"Do you really want to hear my yarns? You're sure it isn't that which
made you feel faint--because I talked so much?"
"It's always an effort not to talk myself," she laughed up at him, yet
with a strange look in her eyes. "All the same, talk a little more.
Tell me what you began to tell about Mr. Litterny." The name came out
full and strong.
"Oh, that! Well, it's a story extraordinary enough for a book. I think
it will interest you."
"I think it will," Katherine agreed.
"You see," he went on, "Mr. Litterny promised us a new parish-house, the
best and largest practicable. It was to cost, with the lot, ten thousand
dollars. It was to be begun this spring. Not long before I came to
Bermuda, I had a note one morning from him, asking me to come to his
house the next evening. I went, and he told me that the parish-house
would have to be given up for the present, because the firm of Litterny
Brothers had just met with a loss, through a most skilful and original
robbery, of five thousand dollars."
"A robbery?" the girl repeated. "Burglars, you mean?"
"Something much more artistic than burglars. I told you this story was
good enough for a book. It's been kept quiet because the detectives
thought the chance better that way of hunting the thief to earth." (Why
should she catch her breath?) "But I'm under no promise--I'm sure I may
tell you. You're not likely to have any connection with the rascal."
Katherine's step hung a little as if she shrank from the words, but she
caught at a part of the sentence and repeated it, "'Hunting the thief to
earth'--you say that as if you'd like to see it done."
"I would like to see it done," said North, with slow emphasis. "Nothing
has ever more roused my resentment. I suppose it's partly the loss of
the parish-house, but, aside from that, it makes me rage to think of
splendid old James Litterny, the biggest-hearted man I know, being done
in that way. Why, he'd have helped the scoundrel in a minute if he'd
gone to him instead of stealing from him. Usually my sympathies are with
the sinner, but I believe if I caught this one I'd be merciless."
"Would you mind sitting down here?" Katherine asked, in a voice which
sounded hard. "I'm not ill, but I feel--tired. I want to sit here and
listen to the story of that unprincipled thief and his wicked robbery."
North was all solicitude in a moment, but the girl put him aside
impatiently.
"I'm quite right. Don't bother. I just want to be still while you talk.
See what a good seat this is."
Over the russet sand of the dunes the sea flashed a burning blue;
storm-twisted cedars led a rutted road down to it; in the salt air the
piny odor was sharp with sunlight. Katherine had dropped beneath one of
the dwarfed trees, and leaning back, smiled dimly up at him with a
stricken face which North did not understand.
"You are ill," he said, anxiously. "You look ill. Please let me take
care of you. There is a house back there--let me--" but she interrupted:
"I'm not ill, and I won't be fussed over. I'm not exactly right, but I
will be in a few minutes. The best thing for me is just to rest here and
have you talk to me. Tell me that story you are so slow about."
He took her at her word. Lying at full length at her feet--his head
propped on a hillock so that he might look into her face, one of his
hands against the hem of her white dress,--the shadows of the cedars
swept back and forth across him, the south sea glittered beyond the
sand-dunes, and he told the story.
"Mr. Litterny was in his office in the early afternoon of February 18,"
he began, "when a man called him up on the telephone. Mr. Litterny did
not recognize the voice, but the man stated at once that he was Burr
Claflin, whose name you may know. He is a rich broker, and a personal
friend of both the Litternys. Voice is so uncertain a quantity over a
telephone that it did not occur to Mr. Litterny to be suspicious on that
point, and the conversation was absolutely in character otherwise. The
talker used expressions and a manner of saying things which the jeweller
knew to be characteristic of Claflin.
"He told Mr. Litterny that he had just made a lucky hit in stocks, and
'turned over a bunch of money,' as he put it, and that he wanted to make
his wife a present. 'Now--this afternoon--this minute,' he said, which
was just like Burr Claflin, who is an impetuous old chap. 'I want to
give her a diamond brooch, and I want her to wear it out to dinner
to-night,' he said. 'Can't you send two or three corkers up to the house
for me?' That surprised Mr. Litterny and he hesitated, but finally said
that he would do it. It was against the rules of the house, but as it
was for Mr. Claflin he would do it. They had a little talk about the
details, and Claflin arranged to call up his wife and tell her that the
jewels would be there at four-thirty, so that she could look out for
them personally. All that was the Litterny end of the affair. Simple
enough, wasn't it?"
Katherine's eyes were so intent, so brilliant, that Norman North went on
with a pleased sense that he told the tale well:
"Now begins the Claflin experience. At half past four a clerk from
Litterny's left a package at the Claflin house in Cleveland Avenue,
which was at once taken, as the man desired, to Mrs. Claflin. She opened
it and found three very handsome diamond brooches, which astonished her
extremely, as she knew nothing about them. However, it was not unusual
for Claflin to give her jewelry, and he is, as I said, an impulsive man,
so that unexpected presents had come once or twice before; and
altogether, being much taken with the stones, she concluded simply that
she would understand when her husband came home to dinner.
"However, her hopes were dashed, for twenty minutes later, barely long
enough for the clerk to have got back to the shop, she was called to the
telephone by a message, said to be from Litterny's, and a most polite
and apologetic person explained over the line that a mistake had been
made; that the diamonds had been addressed and sent to her by an error
of the shipping-clerk; that they were not intended for Mrs. Burr
Claflin, but for Mrs. Bird Catlin, and that the change in name had been
discovered on the messenger's return. Would Mrs. Claflin pardon the
trouble caused, and would she be good enough to see that the package was
given to their man, who would call for it in fifteen minutes? Now the
Catlins, as you must know, are richer people even than the Claflins, so
that the thing was absolutely plausible. Mrs. Claflin tied up the jewels
herself, and entrusted them to her own maid, who has been with her for
years, and this woman answered the door and gave the parcel into the
hands of a man who said that he was sent from Litterny's for it. All
that the maid could say of him was that he was 'a pretty young man, with
a speech like a gentleman.' And that was the last that has been seen of
the diamond brooches. Wasn't it simple? Didn't I tell you that this
affair was an artistic one?" North demanded.
Katherine Newbold drew a deep breath, and the story-teller, watching her
face, saw that she was stirred with an emotion which he put down, with a
slight surprise, to interest in his narrative.
"Is there no clew to the--thief? Have they no idea at all? Haven't those
wonderful detectives yet got on--his track?"
North shook his head. "I had a letter by yesterday's boat from Mr.
Litterny about another matter, and he spoke of this. He said the police
were baffled--that he believed now that it could never be traced."
"Thank God!" Katherine said, slowly and distinctly, and North stared in
astonishment.
"What?" His tone was incredulous.
"Oh; don't take me so seriously," said the girl, impatiently. "It's only
that I can't sympathize with your multimillionaire, who loses a little
of his heaps of money, against some poor soul to whom that little may
mean life or death--life or death, maybe, for his nearest and dearest.
Mr. Litterny has had a small loss, which he won't feel in a year from
now. The thief, the rascal, the scoundrel, as you call him so fluently,
has escaped for now, perhaps, with his ill-gotten gains, but he is a
hunted thing, living with a black terror of being found out--a terror
which clutches him when he prays and when he dances. It's the thief I'm
sorry for--I'm sorry for him--I'm sorry for him." Her voice was agitated
and uneven beyond what seemed reasonable.
"'The way of the transgressor is hard,'" Norman North said, slowly, and
looked across the shifting sand-stretch to the inevitable sea, and
spoke the words pitilessly, as if an inevitable law spoke through him.
They cut into the girl's soul. A quick gasp of pain broke from her, and
the man turned and saw her face and sprang to his feet.
"Come," he said,--"come home," and held out his hands.
She let him take hers, and he lifted her lightly, and did not let her
hands go. For a second they stood, and into the silence a deep boom of
the water against the beach thundered and died away. He drew the hands
slowly toward him till he held them against him. There seemed not to be
any need for words.
Half an hour later, as they walked back through the sweet loneliness of
Springfield Avenue, North said: "You've forgotten something. You've
forgotten that this is the day you were to tell me why you had the bad
manners to laugh at me before you knew me. Now that we are engaged it's
your duty to tell me if I'm ridiculous."
There was none of the responsive, soft laughter he expected. "We're not
engaged--we can't be engaged," she threw back, impetuously, and as he
looked at her there was suffering in her face.
"What do you mean? You told me you loved me." His voice was full of its
curious mixture of gentleness and sternness, and she shrank visibly from
the sternness.
"Don't be hard on me," she begged, like a frightened child, and he
caught her hand with a quick exclamation. "I'll tell you--everything.
Not only that little thing about my laughing, but--but more--everything.
Why I cannot be engaged to you. I must tell you--I know it--but, oh! not
to-day--not for a little while! Let me have this little time to be
happy. You sail a week from to-day. I'll write it all for you, and you
can read it on the way to New York. That will do--won't that do?" she
pleaded.
North took both her hands in a hard grasp and searched her face and her
eyes--eyes clear and sweet, though filled with misery. "Yes, that will
do," he said. "It's all nonsense that you can't be engaged to me. You
are engaged to me, and you are going to marry me. If you love me--and
you say you do,--there's nothing I'll let interfere. Nothing--absolutely
nothing." There was little of the saint in his look now; it was filled
with human love and masterful determination, and in his eyes smouldered
a recklessness, a will to have his way, that was no angel, but all man.
A week later Norman North sailed to New York, and in his pocket was a
letter which was not to be read till Bermuda was out of sight. When the
coral reef was passed, when the fairy blue of the island waters had
changed to the dark swell of the Atlantic, he slipped the bolt in the
door of his cabin and took out the letter.
"I laughed because you were so wonderfully two men in one," it began, "I
was in the church at St. George's the day when you sent the verger away
and went into the pulpit and said parts of the service. I could not tell
you this before because it came so close to the other thing which I must
tell you now; because I sat trembling before you that day, hidden in the
shadow of a gallery, knowing myself a criminal, while you stood above me
like a pitiless judge and rolled out sentences that were bolts of fire
emptied on my soul. The next morning I heard you reciting Limericks. Are
you surprised that I laughed when the contrast struck me? Even then I
wondered which was the real of you, the saint or the man,--which would
win if it came to a desperate fight. The fight is coming, Norman.
"That's all a preamble. Here is what you must know: I am the thief who
stole Mr. Litterny's diamonds."
The letter fell, and the man caught at it as it fell. His hand shook,
but he laughed aloud.
"It is a joke," he said, in a queer, dry voice. "A wretched joke. How
can she?" And he read on:
"You won't believe this at first; you will think I am making a poor
joke; but you will have to believe it in the end. I will try to put the
case before you as an outside person would put it, without softening or
condoning. My mother was very ill; the specialist, to pay whom we had
sold her last jewel, said that she would die if she were not taken
south; we had no money to take her south. That night my brother lost
his self-control and raved about breaking into a shop and stealing
diamonds, to get money to save her life. That put the thought into my
mind, and I made a plan. Randolph, my brother, is a clever amateur
actor, and the rich Burr Claflin is our distant cousin. We both know him
fairly well, and it was easy enough for Randolph to copy his mannerisms.
We knew also, of course, more or less, his way of living, and that it
would not be out of drawing that he should send up diamonds to his wife
unexpectedly. I planned it all, and I made Randolph do it. I have always
been able to influence him to what I pleased. The sin is all mine, not
his. We had been selling my mother's jewels little by little for several
years, so we had no difficulty in getting rid of the stones, which
Randolph took from their settings and sold to different dealers. My
mother knows nothing of where the money came from. We are living in
Bermuda now, in comfort and luxury, I as well as she, on the profits of
my thievery. I am not sorry. It has wrecked life, perhaps eternity, for
me, but I would do it again to save my mother.
"I put this confession into your hands to do with, as far as I am
concerned, what you like. If the saint in you believes that I ought to
be sent to jail, take this to Mr. Litterny and have him send me to
jail. But you shan't touch Randolph--you are not free there. It was I
who did it--he was my tool,--any one will tell you I have the stronger
will. You shall not hurt Randolph--that is barred.
"You see now why I couldn't be engaged to you--you wouldn't want to
marry a thief, would you, Norman? I can never make restitution, you
know, for the money will be mostly gone before we get home, and there is
no more to come. You could not, either, for you said that you had little
beyond your salary. We could never make it good to Mr. Litterny, even if
you wanted to marry me after this. Mr. Litterny is your best friend; you
are bound to him by a thousand ties of gratitude and affection. You
can't marry a thief who has robbed him of five thousand dollars, and
never tell him, and go on taking his gifts. That is the way the saint
will look at it--the saint who thundered awful warnings at me in the
little church at St. George's. But even that day there was something
gentler than the dreadful holiness of you. Do you remember how you
pleaded, begged as if of your father, for your brothers and sisters?
'Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to
our iniquities,' you said. Do you remember? As you said that to God, I
say it to you, I love you. I leave my fate at your mercy. But don't
forget that you yourself begged that, with your hands stretched out to
heaven, as I stretch my hands to you, Norman, Norman--'Deal not with me
according to my sins, neither reward me according to my iniquities.'"
The noises of a ship moving across a quiet ocean went on steadily. Many
feet tramped back and forth on the deck, and cheerful voices and
laughter floated through the skylight, and down below a man knelt in a
narrow cabin with his head buried in his arms, motionless.
CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOR