CHAPTER X

“Well, what did you think of Dr. Ledsmar?”

The girl's abrupt question came as a relief to Theron. They were walking

along in a darkness so nearly complete that he could see next to nothing

of his companion. For some reason, this seemed to suggest a sort of

impropriety. He had listened to the footsteps of the man ahead--whom

he guessed to be a servant--and pictured him as intent upon getting up

early next morning to tell everybody that the Methodist minister had

stolen into the Catholic church at night to walk home with Miss Madden.

That was going to be very awkward--yes, worse than awkward! It might

mean ruin itself. She had mentioned aloud that she had matters to talk

over with him: that of course implied confidences, and the man might

put heaven only knew what construction on that. It was notorious that

servants did ascribe the very worst motives to those they worked for.

The bare thought of the delight an Irish servant would have in also

dragging a Protestant clergyman into the thing was sickening. And what

could she want to talk to him about, anyway? The minute of silence

stretched itself out upon his nerves into an interminable period of

anxious unhappiness. Her mention of the doctor at last somehow, seemed

to lighten the situation.

“Oh, I thought he was very smart.” he made haste to answer. “Wouldn't

it be better--to--keep close to your man? He--may--think we've gone some

other way.”

“It wouldn't matter if he did,” remarked Celia. She appeared to

comprehend his nervousness and take pity on it, for she added, “It is

my brother Michael, as good a soul as ever lived. He is quite used to my

ways.”

The Rev. Mr. Ware drew a long comforting breath. “Oh, I see! He went

with you to--bring you home.”

“To blow the organ,” said the girl in the dark, correctingly. “But about

that doctor; did you like him?”

“Well,” Theron began, “'like' is rather a strong word for so short

an acquaintance. He talked very well; that is, fluently. But he is so

different from any other man I have come into contact with that--”

“What I wanted you to say was that you hated him,” put in Celia, firmly.

“I don't make a practice of saying that of anybody,” returned Theron, so

much at his ease again that he put an effect of gentle, smiling reproof

into the words. “And why specially should I make an exception for him?”

“Because he's a beast!”

Theron fancied that he understood. “I noticed that he seemed not to have

much of an ear for music,” he commented, with a little laugh. “He shut

down the window when you began to play. His doing so annoyed me, because

I--I wanted very much to hear it all. I never heard such music before.

I--I came into the church to hear more of it; but then you stopped!”

“I will play for you some other time,” Celia said, answering the

reproach in his tone. “But tonight I wanted to talk with you instead.”

She kept silent, in spite of this, so long now that Theron was on the

point of jestingly asking when the talk was to begin. Then she put a

question abruptly--

“It is a conventional way of putting it, but are you fond of poetry, Mr.

Ware?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I am,” replied Theron, much mystified. “I can't

say that I am any great judge; but I like the things that I like--and--”

“Meredith,” interposed Celia, “makes one of his women, Emilia in

England, say that poetry is like talking on tiptoe; like animals in

cages, always going to one end and back again. Does it impress you that

way?”

“I don't know that it does,” said he, dubiously. It seemed, however,

to be her whim to talk literature, and he went on: “I've hardly read

Meredith at all. I once borrowed his 'Lucile,' but somehow I never got

interested in it. I heard a recitation of his once, though--a piece

about a dead wife, and the husband and another man quarrelling as to

whose portrait was in the locket on her neck, and of their going up to

settle the dispute, and finding that it was the likeness of a third man,

a young priest--and though it was very striking, it didn't give me a

thirst to know his other poems. I fancied I shouldn't like them. But

I daresay I was wrong. As I get older, I find that I take less narrow

views of literature--that is, of course, of light literature--and

that--that--”

Celia mercifully stopped him. “The reason I asked you was--” she began,

and then herself paused. “Or no,--never mind that--tell me something

else. Are you fond of pictures, statuary, the beautiful things of the

world? Do great works of art, the big achievements of the big artists,

appeal to you, stir you up?”

“Alas! that is something I can only guess at myself,” answered Theron,

humbly. “I have always lived in little places. I suppose, from your

point of view, I have never seen a good painting in my life. I can only

say this, though--that it has always weighed on my mind as a great and

sore deprivation, this being shut out from knowing what others mean when

they talk and write about art. Perhaps that may help you to get at what

you are after. If I ever went to New York, I feel that one of the first

things I should do would be to see all the picture galleries; is that

what you meant? And--would you mind telling me--why you--?”

“Why I asked you?” Celia supplied his halting question. “No, I DON'T

mind. I have a reason for wanting to know--to satisfy myself whether I

had guessed rightly or not--about the kind of man you are. I mean in the

matter of temperament and bent of mind and tastes.”

The girl seemed to be speaking seriously, and without intent to offend.

Theron did not find any comment ready, but walked along by her side,

wondering much what it was all about.

“I daresay you think me 'too familiar on short acquaintance,'” she

continued, after a little.

“My dear Miss Madden!” he protested perfunctorily.

“No; it is a matter of a good deal of importance,” she went on. “I can

see that you are going to be thrown into friendship, close contact, with

Father Forbes. He likes you, and you can't help liking him. There is

nobody else in this raw, overgrown, empty-headed place for you and him

TO like, nobody except that man, that Dr. Ledsmar. And if you like HIM,

I shall hate you! He has done mischief enough already. I am counting on

you to help undo it, and to choke him off from doing more. It would be

different if you were an ordinary Orthodox minister, all encased like

a terrapin in prejudices and nonsense. Of course, if you had been THAT

kind, we should never have got to know you at all. But when I saw you in

MacEvoy's cottage there, it was plain that you were one of US--I mean a

MAN, and not a marionette or a mummy. I am talking very frankly to you,

you see. I want you on my side, against that doctor and his heartless,

bloodless science.”

“I feel myself very heartily on your side,” replied Theron. She had set

their progress at a slower pace, now that the lights of the main

street were drawing near, as if to prolong their talk. All his earlier

reservations had fled. It was almost as if she were a parishioner of

his own. “I need hardly tell you that the doctor's whole attitude

toward--toward revelation--was deeply repugnant to me. It doesn't make

it any the less hateful to call it science. I am afraid, though,” he

went on hesitatingly, “that there are difficulties in the way of my

helping, as you call it. You see, the very fact of my being a Methodist

minister, and his being a Catholic priest, rather puts my interference

out of the question.”

“No; that doesn't matter a button,” said Celia, lightly. “None of us

think of that at all.”

“There is the other embarrassment, then,” pursued Theron, diffidently,

“that Father Forbes is a vastly broader and deeper scholar--in all these

matters--than I am. How could I possibly hope to influence him by my

poor arguments? I don't know even the alphabet of the language he thinks

in--on these subjects, I mean.”

“Of course you don't!” interposed the girl, with a confidence which the

other, for all his meekness, rather winced under. “That wasn't what

I meant at all. We don't want arguments from our friends: we want

sympathies, sensibilities, emotional bonds. The right person's silence

is worth more for companionship than the wisest talk in the world from

anybody else. It isn't your mind that is needed here, or what you know;

it is your heart, and what you feel. You are full of poetry, of ideals,

of generous, unselfish impulses. You see the human, the warm-blooded

side of things. THAT is what is really valuable. THAT is how you can

help!”

“You overestimate me sadly,” protested Theron, though with considerable

tolerance for her error in his tone. “But you ought to tell me something

about this Dr. Ledsmar. He spoke of being an old friend of the pr--of

Father Forbes.”

“Oh, yes, they've always known each other; that is, for many years. They

were professors together in a college once, heaven only knows how long

ago. Then they separated, I fancy they quarrelled, too, before they

parted. The doctor came here, where some relative had left him the

place he lives in. Then in time the Bishop chanced to send Father Forbes

here--that was about three years ago,--and the two men after a while

renewed their old relations. They dine together; that is the doctor's

stronghold. He knows more about eating than any other man alive, I

believe. He studies it as you would study a language. He has taught

old Maggie, at the pastorate there, to cook like the mother of all

the Delmonicos. And while they sit and stuff themselves, or loll about

afterward like gorged snakes, they think it is smart to laugh at all the

sweet and beautiful things in life, and to sneer at people who believe

in ideals, and to talk about mankind being merely a fortuitous product

of fermentation, and twaddle of that sort. It makes me sick!”

“I can readily see,” said Theron, with sympathy, “how such a cold,

material, and infidel influence as that must shock and revolt an

essentially religious temperament like yours.”

Miss Madden looked up at him. They had turned into the main street, and

there was light enough for him to detect something startlingly like a

grin on her beautiful face.

“But I'm not religious at all, you know,” he heard her say. “I'm as

Pagan as--anything! Of course there are forms to be observed, and so on;

I rather like them than otherwise. I can make them serve very well for

my own system; for I am myself, you know, an out-an-out Greek.”

“Why, I had supposed that you were full blooded Irish,” the Rev. Mr.

Ware found himself remarking, and then on the instant was overwhelmed by

the consciousness that he had said a foolish thing. Precisely where the

folly lay he did not know, but it was impossible to mistake the gesture

of annoyance which his companion had instinctively made at his words.

She had widened the distance between them now, and quickened her step.

They went on in silence till they were within a block of her house.

Several people had passed them who Theron felt sure must have recognized

them both.

“What I meant was,” the girl all at once began, drawing nearer again,

and speaking with patient slowness, “that I find myself much more in

sympathy with the Greek thought, the Greek theology of the beautiful

and the strong, the Greek philosophy of life, and all that, than what is

taught nowadays. Personally, I take much more stock in Plato than I

do in Peter. But of course it is a wholly personal affair; I had no

business to bother you with it. And for that matter, I oughtn't to have

troubled you with any of our--”

“I assure you, Miss Madden!” the young minister began, with fervor.

“No,” she broke in, in a resigned and even downcast tone; “let it all be

as if I hadn't spoken. Don't mind anything I have said. If it is to be,

it will be. You can't say more than that, can you?”

She looked into his face again, and her large eyes produced an

impression of deep melancholy, which Theron found himself somehow

impelled to share. Things seemed all at once to have become very sad

indeed.

“It is one of my unhappy nights,” she explained, in gloomy confidence.

“I get them every once in a while--as if some vicious planet or other

was crossing in front of my good star--and then I'm a caution to snakes.

I shut myself up--that's the only thing to do--and have it out with

myself I didn't know but the organ-music would calm me down, but it

hasn't. I shan't sleep a wink tonight, but just rage around from one

room to another, piling all the cushions from the divans on to the

floor, and then kicking them away again. Do YOU ever have fits like

that?”

Theron was able to reply with a good conscience in the negative. It

occurred to him to add, with jocose intent: “I am curious to know,

do these fits, as you call them, occupy a prominent part in Grecian

philosophy as a general rule?”

Celia gave a little snort, which might have signified amusement, but did

not speak until they were upon her own sidewalk. “There is my brother,

waiting at the gate,” she said then, briefly.

“Well, then, I will bid you good-night here, I think,” Theron remarked,

coming to a halt, and offering his hand. “It must be getting very

late, and my--that is--I have to be up particularly early tomorrow. So

good-night; I hope you will be feeling ever so much better in spirits in

the morning.”

“Oh, that doesn't matter,” replied the girl, listlessly. “It's a very

paltry little affair, this life of ours, at the best of it. Luckily it's

soon done with--like a bad dream.”

“Tut! Tut! I won't have you talk like that!” interrupted Theron, with a

swift and smart assumption of authority. “Such talk isn't sensible, and

it isn't good. I have no patience with it!”

“Well, try and have a little patience with ME, anyway, just for

tonight,” said Celia, taking the reproof with gentlest humility, rather

to her censor's surprise. “I really am unhappy tonight, Mr. Ware, very

unhappy. It seems as if all at once the world had swelled out in size

a thousandfold, and that poor me had dwindled down to the merest wee

little red-headed atom--the most helpless and forlorn and lonesome of

atoms at that.” She seemed to force a sorrowful smile on her face as she

added: “But all the same it has done me good to be with you--I am sure

it has--and I daresay that by tomorrow I shall be quite out of the

blues. Good-night, Mr. Ware. Forgive my making such an exhibition of

myself I WAS going to be such a fine early Greek, you know, and I have

turned out only a late Milesian--quite of the decadence. I shall do

better next time. And good-night again, and ever so many thanks.”

She was walking briskly away toward the gate now, where the shadowy

Michael still patiently stood. Theron strode off in the opposite

direction, taking long, deliberate steps, and bowing his head in

thought. He had his hands behind his back, as was his wont, and the

sense of their recent contact with her firm, ungloved hands was,

curiously enough, the thing which pushed itself uppermost in his mind.

There had been a frank, almost manly vigor in her grasp; he said

to himself that of course that came from her playing so much on the

keyboard; the exercise naturally would give her large, robust hands.

Suddenly he remembered about the piano; he had quite forgotten to

solicit her aid in selecting it. He turned, upon the impulse, to go

back. She had not entered the gate as yet, but stood, shiningly visible

under the street lamp, on the sidewalk, and she was looking in his

direction. He turned again like a shot, and started homeward.

The front door of the parsonage was unlocked, and he made his way on

tiptoe through the unlighted hall to the living-room. The stuffy air

here was almost suffocating with the evil smell of a kerosene

lamp turned down too low. Alice sat asleep in her old farmhouse

rocking-chair, with an inelegant darning-basket on the table by her

side. The whole effect of the room was as bare and squalid to Theron's

newly informed eye as the atmosphere was offensive to his nostrils. He

coughed sharply, and his wife sat up and looked at the clock. It was

after eleven.

“Where on earth have you been?” she asked, with a yawn, turning up the

wick of her sewing-lamp again.

“You ought never to turn down a light like that,” said Theron, with a

complaining note in his voice. “It smells up the whole place. I never

dreamed of your sitting up for me like this. You ought to have gone to

bed.”

“But how could I guess that you were going to be so late?,” she

retorted. “And you haven't told me where you were. Is this book of yours

going to keep you up like this right along?”

The episode of the book was buried in the young minister's mind beneath

such a mass of subsequent experiences that it required an effort for him

to grasp what she was talking about. It seemed as if months had elapsed

since he was in earnest about that book; and yet he had left the house

full of it only a few hours before. He shook his wits together, and made

answer--

“Oh, bless you, no! Only there arose a very curious question. You have

no idea, literally no conception, of the interesting and important

problems which are raised by the mere fact of Abraham leaving the city

of Ur. It's amazing, I assure you. I hadn't realized it myself.”

“Well,” remarked Alice, rising--and with good-humor and petulance

struggling sleepily ill her tone--“all I've got to say is, that if

Abraham hasn't anything better to do than to keep young ministers of the

gospel out, goodness knows where, till all hours of the night, I wish to

gracious he'd stayed in the city of Ur right straight along.”

“You have no idea what a scholarly man Dr. Ledsmar is,” Theron suddenly

found himself inspired to volunteer. “He has the most marvellous

collection of books--a whole library devoted to this very subject--and

he has put them all quite freely at my disposal. Extremely kind of him,

isn't it?”

“Ledsmar? Ledsmar?” queried Alice. “I don't seem to remember the name.

He isn't the little man with the birthmark, who sits in the pew behind

the Lovejoys, is he? I think some one said he was a doctor.”

“Yes, a horse doctor!” said Theron, with a sniff. “No; you haven't seen

this Dr. Ledsmar at all. I--I don't know that he attends any church

regularly. I scraped his acquaintance quite by accident. He is really a

character. He lives in the big house, just beyond the race-course, you

know--the one with the tower at the back--”

“No, I don't know. How should I? I've hardly poked my nose outside of

the yard since I have been here.”

“Well, you shall go,” said the husband, consolingly. “You HAVE been

cooped up here too much, poor girl. I must take you out more, really.

I don't know that I could take you to the doctor's place--without an

invitation, I mean. He is very queer about some things. He lives there

all alone, for instance, with only a Chinaman for a servant. He told

me I was almost the only man he had asked under his roof for years. He

isn't a practising physician at all, you know. He is a scientist; he

makes experiments with lizards--and things.”

“Theron,” the wife said, pausing lamp in hand on her way to the bedroom,

“do you be careful, now! For all you know this doctor may be a loose

man, or pretty near an infidel. You've got to be mighty particular in

such matters, you know, or you'll have the trustees down on you like a

'thousand of bricks.'”

“I will thank the trustees to mind their own business,” said Theron,

stiffly, and the subject dropped.

The bedroom window upstairs was open, and upon the fresh night air

was borne in the shrill, jangling sound of a piano, being played off

somewhere in the distance, but so vehemently that the noise imposed

itself upon the silence far and wide. Theron listened to this as he

undressed. It proceeded from the direction of the main street, and he

knew, as by instinct, that it was the Madden girl who was playing. The

incongruity of the hour escaped his notice. He mused instead upon the

wild and tropical tangle of moods, emotions, passions, which had grown

up in that strange temperament. He found something very pathetic in

that picture she had drawn of herself in forecast, roaming disconsolate

through her rooms the livelong night, unable to sleep. The woful moan of

insomnia seemed to make itself heard in every strain from her piano.

Alice heard it also, but being unillumined, she missed the romantic

pathos. “I call it disgraceful,” she muttered from her pillow, “for

folks to be banging away on a piano at this time of night. There ought

to be a law to prevent it.”

“It may be some distressed soul,” said Theron, gently, “seeking relief

from the curse of sleeplessness.”

The wife laughed, almost contemptuously. “Distressed fiddlesticks!” was

her only other comment.

The music went on for a long time--rising now to strident heights, now

sinking off to the merest tinkling murmur, and broken ever and again by

intervals of utter hush. It did not prevent Alice from at once falling

sound asleep; but Theron lay awake, it seemed to him, for hours,

listening tranquilly, and letting his mind wander at will through the

pleasant antechambers of Sleep, where are more unreal fantasies than

Dreamland itself affords.

PART II

CHAPTER XI

For some weeks the Rev. Theron Ware saw nothing of either the priest or

the doctor, or the interesting Miss Madden.

There were, indeed, more urgent matters to think about. June had come;

and every succeeding day brought closer to hand the ordeal of his first

Quarterly Conference in Octavius. The waters grew distinctly rougher as

his pastoral bark neared this difficult passage.

He would have approached the great event with an easier mind if he could

have made out just how he stood with his congregation. Unfortunately

nothing in his previous experiences helped him in the least to measure

or guess at the feelings of these curious Octavians. Their Methodism

seemed to be sound enough, and to stick quite to the letter of the

Discipline, so long as it was expressed in formulae. It was its spirit

which he felt to be complicated by all sorts of conditions wholly novel

to him.

The existence of a line of street-cars in the town, for example, would

not impress the casual thinker as likely to prove a rock in the path of

peaceful religion. Theron, in his simplicity, had even thought, when he

first saw these bobtailed cars bumping along the rails in the middle of

the main street, that they must be a great convenience to people living

in the outskirts, who wished to get in to church of a Sunday morning. He

was imprudent enough to mention this in conversation with one of his new

parishioners. Then he learned, to his considerable chagrin, that when

this line was built, some years before, a bitter war of words had been

fought upon the question of its being worked on the Sabbath day. The

then occupant of the Methodist pulpit had so distinguished himself

above the rest by the solemnity and fervor of his protests against this

insolent desecration of God's day that the Methodists of Octavius

still felt themselves peculiarly bound to hold this horse-car line, its

management, and everything connected with it, in unbending aversion. At

least once a year they were accustomed to expect a sermon denouncing it

and all its impious Sunday patrons. Theron made a mental resolve that

this year they should be disappointed.

Another burning problem, which he had not been called upon before to

confront, he found now entangled with the mysterious line which divided

a circus from a menagerie. Those itinerant tent-shows had never come his

way heretofore, and he knew nothing of that fine balancing proportion

between ladies in tights on horseback and cages full of deeply

educational animals, which, even as the impartial rain, was designed

to embrace alike the just and the unjust. There had arisen inside the

Methodist society of Octavius some painful episodes, connected with

members who took their children “just to see the animals,” and were

convicted of having also watched the Rose-Queen of the Arena, in her

unequalled flying leap through eight hoops, with an ardent and unashamed

eye. One of these cases still remained on the censorial docket of the

church; and Theron understood that he was expected to name a committee

of five to examine and try it. This he neglected to do.

He was no longer at all certain that the congregation as a whole liked

his sermons. The truth was, no doubt, that he had learned enough to

cease regarding the congregation as a whole. He could still rely upon

carrying along with him in his discourses from the pulpit a large

majority of interested and approving faces. But here, unhappily, was a

case where the majority did not rule. The minority, relatively small in

numbers, was prodigious in virile force.

More than twenty years had now elapsed since that minor schism in the

Methodist Episcopal Church, the result of which was the independent body

known as Free Methodists, had relieved the parent flock of its principal

disturbing element. The rupture came fittingly at that time when all the

“isms” of the argumentative fifties were hurled violently together into

the melting-pot of civil war. The great Methodist Church, South, had

broken bodily off on the question of State Rights. The smaller and

domestic fraction of Free Methodism separated itself upon an issue

which may be most readily described as one of civilization. The seceders

resented growth in material prosperity; they repudiated the introduction

of written sermons and organ-music; they deplored the increasing laxity

in meddlesome piety, the introduction of polite manners in the pulpit

and classroom, and the development of even a rudimentary desire among

the younger people of the church to be like others outside in dress and

speech and deportment. They did battle as long as they could, inside

the fold, to restore it to the severely straight and narrow path of

primitive Methodism. When the adverse odds became too strong for them,

they quitted the church and set up a Bethel for themselves.

Octavius chanced to be one of the places where they were able to hold

their own within the church organization. The Methodism of the town had

gone along without any local secession. It still held in full fellowship

the radicals who elsewhere had followed their unbridled bent into the

strongest emotional vagaries--where excited brethren worked themselves

up into epileptic fits, and women whirled themselves about in weird

religious ecstasies, like dervishes of the Orient, till they

fell headlong in a state of trance. Octavian Methodism was spared

extravagances of this sort, it is true, but it paid a price for the

immunity. The people whom an open split would have taken away remained

to leaven and dominate the whole lump. This small advanced section, with

its men of a type all the more aggressive from its narrowness, and women

who went about solemnly in plain gray garments, with tight-fitting,

unadorned, mouse-colored sunbonnets, had not been able wholly to

enforce its views upon the social life of the church members, but of its

controlling influence upon their official and public actions there could

be no doubt.

The situation had begun to unfold itself to Theron from the outset.

He had recognized the episodes of the forbidden Sunday milk and of the

flowers in poor Alice's bonnet as typical of much more that was to

come. No week followed without bringing some new fulfilment of this

foreboding. Now, at the end of two months, he knew well enough that

the hitherto dominant minority was hostile to him and his ministry, and

would do whatever it could against him.

Though Theron at once decided to show fight, and did not at all waver

in that resolve, his courage was in the main of a despondent sort.

Sometimes it would flutter up to the point of confidence, or at

least hopefulness, when he met with substantial men of the church who

obviously liked him, and whom he found himself mentally ranging on his

side, in the struggle which was to come. But more often it was blankly

apparent to him that, the moment flags were flying and drums on the

roll, these amiable fair-weather friends would probably take to their

heels.

Still, such as they were, his sole hope lay in their support. He must

make the best of them. He set himself doggedly to the task of gathering

together all those who were not his enemies into what, when the proper

time came, should be known as the pastor's party. There was plenty of

apostolic warrant for this. If there had not been, Theron felt that the

mere elementary demands of self-defence would have justified his use of

strategy.

The institution of pastoral calling, particularly that inquisitorial

form of it laid down in the Discipline, had never attracted Theron.

He and Alice had gone about among their previous flocks in quite a

haphazard fashion, without thought of system, much less of deliberate

purpose. Theron made lists now, and devoted thought and examination to

the personal tastes and characteristics of the people to be cultivated.

There were some, for example, who would expect him to talk pretty much

as the Discipline ordained--that is, to ask if they had family prayer,

to inquire after their souls, and generally to minister grace to his

hearers--and these in turn subdivided themselves into classes, ranging

from those who would wish nothing else to those who needed only a mild

spiritual flavor. There were others whom he would please much better by

not talking shop at all. Although he could ill afford it, he subscribed

now for a daily paper that he might have a perpetually renewed source of

good conversational topics for these more worldly calls. He also bought

several pounds of candy, pleasing in color, but warranted to be entirely

harmless, and he made a large mysterious mark on the inside of his new

silk hat to remind him not to go out calling without some of this in his

pocket for the children.

Alice, he felt, was not helping him in this matter as effectively as he

could have wished. Her attitude toward the church in Octavius might best

be described by the word “sulky.” Great allowance was to be made, he

realized, for her humiliation over the flowers in her bonnet. That might

justify her, fairly enough, in being kept away from meeting now and

again by headaches, or undefined megrims. But it ought not to prevent

her from going about and making friends among the kindlier parishioners

who would welcome such a thing, and whom he from time to time indicated

to her. She did go to some extent, it is true, but she produced,

in doing so, an effect of performing a duty. He did not find traces

anywhere of her having created a brilliant social impression. When they

went out together, he was peculiarly conscious of having to do the work

unaided.

This was not at all like the Alice of former years, of other charges.

Why, she had been, beyond comparison, the most popular young woman in

Tyre. What possessed her to mope like this in Octavius?

Theron looked at her attentively nowadays, when she was unaware of his

gaze, to try if her face offered any answer to the riddle. It could not

be suggested that she was ill. Never in her life had she been looking so

well. She had thrown herself, all at once, and with what was to him

an unaccountable energy, into the creation and management of a

flower-garden. She was out the better part of every day, rain or shine,

digging, transplanting, pruning, pottering generally about among her

plants and shrubs. This work in the open air had given her an aspect of

physical well-being which it was impossible to be mistaken about.

Her husband was glad, of course, that she had found some occupation

which at once pleased her and so obviously conduced to health. This was

so much a matter of course, in fact, that he said to himself over and

over again that he was glad. Only--only, sometimes the thought WOULD

force itself upon his attention that if she did not spend so much of her

time in her own garden, she would have more time to devote to winning

friends for them in the Garden of the Lord--friends whom they were going

to need badly.

The young minister, in taking anxious stock of the chances for and

against him, turned over often in his mind the fact that he had already

won rank as a pulpit orator. His sermons had attracted almost universal

attention at Tyre, and his achievement before the Conference at

Tecumseh, if it did fail to receive practical reward, had admittedly

distanced all the other preaching there. It was a part of the evil luck

pursuing him that here in this perversely enigmatic Octavius his special

gift seemed to be of no use whatever. There were times, indeed, when he

was tempted to think that bad preaching was what Octavius wanted.

Somewhere he had heard of a Presbyterian minister, in charge of a big

city church, who managed to keep well in with a watchfully Orthodox

congregation, and at the same time establish himself in the affections

of the community at large, by simply preaching two kinds of sermons. In

the morning, when almost all who attended were his own communicants,

he gave them very cautious and edifying doctrinal discourses, treading

loyally in the path of the Westminster Confession. To the evening

assemblages, made up for the larger part of outsiders, he addressed

broadly liberal sermons, literary in form, and full of respectful

allusions to modern science and the philosophy of the day. Thus he

filled the church at both services, and put money in its treasury and

his own fame before the world. There was of course the obvious danger

that the pious elders who in the forenoon heard infant damnation

vigorously proclaimed, would revolt when they heard after supper that

there was some doubt about even adults being damned at all. But either

because the same people did not attend both services, or because the

minister's perfect regularity in the morning was each week regarded as a

retraction of his latest vagaries of an evening, no trouble ever came.

Theron had somewhat tentatively tried this on in Octavius. It was no

good. His parishioners were of the sort who would have come to church

eight times a day on Sunday, instead of two, if occasion offered. The

hope that even a portion of them would stop away, and that their places

would be taken in the evening by less prejudiced strangers who wished

for intellectual rather than theological food, fell by the wayside. The

yearned-for strangers did not come; the familiar faces of the morning

service all turned up in their accustomed places every evening. They

were faces which confused and disheartened Theron in the daytime.

Under the gaslight they seemed even harder and more unsympathetic. He

timorously experimented with them for an evening or two, then abandoned

the effort.

Once there had seemed the beginning of a chance. The richest banker in

Octavius--a fat, sensual, hog-faced old bachelor--surprised everybody

one evening by entering the church and taking a seat. Theron happened

to know who he was; even if he had not known, the suppressed excitement

visible in the congregation, the way the sisters turned round to

look, the way the more important brethren put their heads together and

exchanged furtive whispers--would have warned him that big game was in

view. He recalled afterward with something like self-disgust the eager,

almost tremulous pains he himself took to please this banker. There was

a part of the sermon, as it had been written out, which might easily

give offence to a single man of wealth and free notions of life. With

the alertness of a mental gymnast, Theron ran ahead, excised this

portion, and had ready when the gap was reached some very pretty general

remarks, all the more effective and eloquent, he felt, for having

been extemporized. People said it was a good sermon; and after

the benediction and dispersion some of the officials and principal

pew-holders remained to talk over the likelihood of a capture having

been effected. Theron did not get away without having this mentioned

to him, and he was conscious of sharing deeply the hope of the

brethren--with the added reflection that it would be a personal triumph

for himself into the bargain. He was ashamed of this feeling a little

later, and of his trick with the sermon. But this chastening product

of introspection was all the fruit which the incident bore. The banker

never came again.

Theron returned one afternoon, a little earlier than usual, from a group

of pastoral calls. Alice, who was plucking weeds in a border at the

shady side of the house, heard his step, and rose from her labors. He

was walking slowly, and seemed weary. He took off his high hat, as

he saw her, and wiped his brow. The broiling June sun was still high

overhead. Doubtless it was its insufferable heat which was accountable

for the worn lines in his face and the spiritless air which the wife's

eye detected. She went to the gate, and kissed him as he entered.

“I believe if I were you,” she said, “I'd carry an umbrella such

scorching days as this. Nobody'd think anything of it. I don't see why a

minister shouldn't carry one as much as a woman carries a parasol.”

Theron gave her a rueful, meditative sort of smile. “I suppose people

really do think of us as a kind of hybrid female,” he remarked. Then,

holding his hat in his hand, he drew a long breath of relief at finding

himself in the shade, and looked about him.

“Why, you've got more posies here, on this one side of the house alone,

than mother had in her whole yard,” he said, after a little. “Let's

see--I know that one: that's columbine, isn't it? And that's London

pride, and that's ragged robin. I don't know any of the others.”

Alice recited various unfamiliar names, as she pointed out the several

plants which bore them, and he listened with a kindly semblance of

interest.

They strolled thus to the rear of the house, where thick clumps of

fragrant pinks lined both sides of the path. She picked some of these

for him, and gave him more names with which to label the considerable

number of other plants he saw about him.

“I had no idea we were so well provided as all this,” he commented at

last. “Those Van Sizers must have been tremendous hands for flowers. You

were lucky in following such people.”

“Van Sizers!” echoed Alice, with contempt. “All they left was old tomato

cans and clamshells. Why, I've put in every blessed one of these myself,

all except those peonies, there, and one brier on the side wall.”

“Good for you!” exclaimed Theron, approvingly. Then it occurred to him

to ask, “But where did you get them all? Around among our friends?”

“Some few,” responded Alice, with a note of hesitation in her voice.

“Sister Bult gave me the verbenas, there, and the white pinks were

a present from Miss Stevens. But most of them Levi Gorringe was good

enough to send me--from his garden.”

“I didn't know that Gorringe had a garden,” said Theron. “I thought he

lived over his law-office, in the brick block, there.”

“Well, I don't know that it's exactly HIS,” explained Alice; “but it's a

big garden somewhere outside, where he can have anything he likes.” She

went on with a little laugh: “I didn't like to question him too closely,

for fear he'd think I was looking a gift horse in the mouth--or else

hinting for more. It was quite his own offer, you know. He picked them

all out for me, and brought them here, and lent me a book telling me

just what to do with each one. And in a few days, now, I am to have

another big batch of plants--dahlias and zinnias and asters and so on;

I'm almost ashamed to take them. But it's such a change to find some one

in this Octavius who isn't all self!”

“Yes, Gorringe is a good fellow,” said Theron. “I wish he was a

professing member.” Then some new thought struck him. “Alice,” he

exclaimed, “I believe I'll go and see him this very afternoon. I don't

know why it hasn't occurred to me before: he's just the man whose advice

I need most. He knows these people here; he can tell me what to do.”

“Aren't you too tired now?” suggested Alice, as Theron put on his hat.

“No, the sooner the better,” he replied, moving now toward the gate.

“Well,” she began, “if I were you, I wouldn't say too much about--that

is, I--but never mind.”

“What is it?” asked her husband.

“Nothing whatever,” replied Alice, positively. “It was only some

nonsense of mine;” and Theron, placidly accepting the feminine whim,

went off down the street again.

CHAPTER XII

The Rev. Mr. Ware found Levi Gorringe's law-office readily enough, but

its owner was not in. He probably would be back again, though, in a

quarter of an hour or so, the boy said, and the minister at once decided

to wait.

Theron was interested in finding that this office-boy was no other than

Harvey--the lad who brought milk to the parsonage every morning. He

remembered now that he had heard good things of this urchin, as to the

hard work he did to help his mother, the Widow Semple, in her struggle

to keep a roof over her head; and also bad things, in that he did

not come regularly either to church or Sunday-school. The clergyman

recalled, too, that Harvey had impressed him as a character.

“Well, sonny, are you going to be a lawyer?” he asked, as he seated

himself by the window, and looked about him, first at the dusty litter

of old papers, pamphlets, and tape-bound documents in bundles which

crowded the stuffy chamber, and then at the boy himself.

Harvey was busy at a big box--a rough pine dry-goods box which bore the

flaring label of an express company, and also of a well-known seed firm

in a Western city, and which the boy had apparently just opened. He was

lifting from it, and placing on the table after he had shaken off the

sawdust and moss in which they were packed, small parcels of what looked

in the fading light to be half-dried plants.

“Well, I don't know--I rather guess not,” he made answer, as he pursued

his task. “So far as I can make out, this wouldn't be the place to start

in at, if I WAS going to be a lawyer. A boy can learn here first-rate

how to load cartridges and clean a gun, and braid trout-flies on to

leaders, but I don't see much law laying around loose. Anyway,” he went

on, “I couldn't afford to read law, and not be getting any wages. I have

to earn money, you know.”

Theron felt that he liked the boy. “Yes,” he said, with a kindly tone;

“I've heard that you are a good, industrious youngster. I daresay Mr.

Gorringe will see to it that you get a chance to read law, and get wages

too.”

“Oh, I can read all there is here and welcome,” the boy explained,

stepping toward the window to decipher the label on a bundle of roots

in his hand, “but that's no good unless there's regular practice coming

into the office all the while. THAT'S how you learn to be a lawyer. But

Gorringe don't have what I call a practice at all. He just sees men in

the other room there, with the door shut, and whatever there is to do he

does it all himself.”

The minister remembered a stray hint somewhere that Mr. Gorringe was

a money-lender--what was colloquially called a “note-shaver.” To his

rustic sense, there was something not quite nice about that occupation.

It would be indecorous, he felt, to encourage further talk about it from

the boy.

“What are you doing there?” he inquired, to change the subject.

“Sorting out some plants,” replied Harvey. “I don't know what's got

into Gorringe lately. This is the third big box he's had since I've been

here--that is, in six weeks--besides two baskets full of rose-bushes.

I don't know what he does with them. He carries them off himself

somewhere. I've had kind of half a notion that he's figurin' on getting

married. I can't think of anything else that would make a man spend

money like water--just for flowers and bushes. They do get foolish, you

know, when they've got marriage on the brain.”

Theron found himself only imperfectly following the theories of the

young philosopher. It was his fact that monopolized the minister's

attention.

“But as I understand it,” he remarked hesitatingly, “Brother

Gorringe--or rather Mr. Gorringe--gets all the plants he wants,

everything he likes, from a big garden somewhere outside. I don't

know that it is exactly his; but I remember hearing something to that

effect.”

The boy slapped the last litter off his hands, and, as he came to the

window, shook his head. “These don't come from no garden outside,” he

declared. “They come from the dealers', and he pays solid cash for 'em.

The invoice for this lot alone was thirty-one dollars and sixty cents.

There it is on the table. You can see it for yourself.”

Mr. Ware did not offer to look. “Very likely these are for the garden I

was speaking of,” he said. “Of course you can't go on taking plants out

of a garden indefinitely without putting others in.”

“I don't know anything about any garden that he takes plants out of,”

answered Harvey, and looked meditatively for a minute or two out upon

the street below. Then he turned to the minister. “Your wife's doing a

good deal of gardening this spring, I notice,” he said casually. “You'd

hardly think it was the same place, she's fixed it up so. If she wants

any extra hoeing done, I can always get off Saturday afternoons.”

“I will remember,” said Theron. He also looked out of the window; and

nothing more was said until, a few moments later, Mr. Gorringe himself

came in.

The lawyer seemed both surprised and pleased at discovering the

identity of his visitor, with whom he shook hands in almost an excess of

cordiality. He spread a large newspaper over the pile of seedling plants

on the table, pushed the packing-box under the table with his foot, and

said almost peremptorily to the boy, “You can go now!” Then he turned

again to Theron.

“Well, Mr. Ware, I'm glad to see you,” he repeated, and drew up a chair

by the window. “Things are going all right with you, I hope.”

Theron noted again the waving black hair, the dark skin, and the

carefully trimmed mustache and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer's face

a combined effect of romance and smartness. No; it was the eyes,

cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which suggested this latter quality. The

recollection of having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hostility

of sarcasm, when those other trustees had their backs turned, came

mercifully at the moment to recall the young minister to his errand.

“I thought I would drop in and have a chat with you,” he said, getting

better under way as he went on. “Quarterly Conference is only a

fortnight off, and I am a good deal at sea about what is going to

happen.”

“I'm not a church member, you know,” interposed Gorringe. “That shuts me

out of the Quarterly Conference.”

“Alas, yes!” said Theron. “I wish it didn't. I'm afraid I'm not going to

have any friends to spare there.”

“What are you afraid of?” asked the lawyer, seeming now to be wholly at

his ease again “They can't eat you.”

“No, they keep me too lean for that,” responded Theron, with a pensive

smile. “I WAS going to ask, you know, for an increase of salary, or an

extra allowance. I don't see how I can go on as it is. The sum fixed by

the last Quarterly Conference of the old year, and which I am getting

now, is one hundred dollars less than my predecessor had. That isn't

fair, and it isn't right. But so far from its looking as if I could get

an increase, the prospect seems rather that they will make me pay for

the gas and that sidewalk. I never recovered more than about half of my

moving expenses, as you know, and--and, frankly, I don't know which way

to turn. It keeps me miserable all the while.”

“That's where you're wrong,” said Mr. Gorringe. “If you let things

like that worry you, you'll keep a sore skin all your life. You take

my advice and just go ahead your own gait, and let other folks do the

worrying. They ARE pretty close-fisted here, for a fact, but you

can manage to rub along somehow. If you should get into any real

difficulties, why, I guess--” the lawyer paused to smile in a

hesitating, significant way--“I guess some road out can be found all

right. The main thing is, don't fret, and don't allow your wife to--to

fret either.”

He stopped abruptly. Theron nodded in recognition of his amiable tone,

and then found the nod lengthening itself out into almost a bow as the

thought spread through his mind that this had been nothing more nor less

than a promise to help him with money if worst came to worst. He looked

at Levi Gorringe, and said to himself that the intuition of women was

wonderful. Alice had picked him out as a friend of theirs merely by

seeing him pass the house.

“Yes,” he said; “I am specially anxious to keep my wife from worrying.

She was surrounded in her girlhood by a good deal of what, relatively,

we should call luxury, and that makes it all the harder for her to be a

poor minister's wife. I had quite decided to get her a hired girl, come

what might, but she thinks she'd rather get on without one. Her health

is better, I must admit, than it was when we came here. She works out in

her garden a great deal, and that seems to agree with her.”

“Octavius is a healthy place--that's generally admitted,” replied the

lawyer, with indifference. He seemed not to be interested in Mrs. Ware's

health, but looked intently out through the window at the buildings

opposite, and drummed with his fingers on the arms of his chair.

Theron made haste to revert to his errand. “Of course, your not being in

the Quarterly Conference,” he said, “renders certain things impossible.

But I didn't know but you might have some knowledge of how matters are

going, what plans the officials of the church had; they seem to have

agreed to tell me nothing.”

“Well, I HAVE heard this much,” responded Gorringe. “They're figuring on

getting the Soulsbys here to raise the debt and kind o' shake things up

generally. I guess that's about as good as settled. Hadn't you heard of

it?”

“Not a breath!” exclaimed Theron, mournfully. “Well,” he added upon

reflection, “I'm sorry, downright sorry. The debt-raiser seems to me

about the lowest-down thing we produce. I've heard of those Soulsbys; I

think I saw HIM indeed once at Conference, but I believe SHE is the head

of the firm.”

“Yes; she wears the breeches, I understand,” said Gorringe

sententiously.

“I HAD hoped,” the young minister began with a rueful sigh, “in fact, I

felt quite confident at the outset that I could pay off this debt, and

put the church generally on a new footing, by giving extra attention to

my pulpit work. It is hardly for me to say it, but in other places where

I have been, my preaching has been rather--rather a feature in the town

itself. I have always been accustomed to attract to our services a good

many non-members, and that, as you know, helps tremendously from a money

point of view. But somehow that has failed here. I doubt if the average

congregations are a whit larger now than they were when I came in April.

I know the collections are not.”

“No,” commented the lawyer, slowly; “you'll never do anything in that

line in Octavius. You might, of course, if you were to stay here and

work hard at it for five or six years--”

“Heaven forbid!” groaned Mr. Ware.

“Quite so,” put in the other. “The point is that the Methodists here

are a little set by themselves. I don't know that they like one another

specially, but I do know that they are not what you might call popular

with people outside. Now, a new preacher at the Presbyterian church,

or even the Baptist--he might have a chance to create talk, and make

a stir. But Methodist--no! People who don't belong won't come near the

Methodist church here so long as there's any other place with a roof on

it to go to. Give a dog a bad name, you know. Well, the Methodists here

have got a bad name; and if you could preach like Henry Ward Beecher

himself you wouldn't change it, or get folks to come and hear you.”

“I see what you mean,” Theron responded. “I'm not particularly surprised

myself that Octavius doesn't love us, or look to us for intellectual

stimulation. I myself leave that pulpit more often than otherwise

feeling like a wet rag--utterly limp and discouraged. But, if you don't

mind my speaking of it, YOU don't belong, and yet YOU come.”

It was evident that the lawyer did not mind. He spoke freely in reply.

“Oh, yes, I've got into the habit of it. I began going when I first came

here, and--and so it grew to be natural for me to go. Then, of course,

being the only lawyer you have, a considerable amount of my business is

mixed up in one way or another with your membership; you see those are

really the things which settle a man in a rut, and keep him there.”

“I suppose your people were Methodists,” said Theron, to fill in the

pause, “and that is how you originally started with us.”

Levi Gorringe shook his head. He leaned back, half closed his eyes,

put his finger-tips together, and almost smiled as if something in

retrospect pleased and moved him.

“No,” he said; “I went to the church first to see a girl who used to

go there. It was long before your time. All her family moved away years

ago. You wouldn't know any of them. I was younger then, and I didn't

know as much as I do now. I worshipped the very ground that girl walked

on, and like a fool I never gave her so much as a hint of it. Looking

back now, I can see that I might have had her if I'd asked her. But

I went instead and sat around and looked at her at church and

Sunday-school and prayer-meetings Thursday nights, and class-meetings

after the sermon. She was devoted to religion and church work; and,

thinking it would please her, I joined the church on probation. Men can

fool themselves easier than they can other people. I actually believed

at the time that I had experienced religion. I felt myself full of all

sorts of awakenings of the soul and so forth. But it was really that

girl. You see I'm telling you the thing just as it was. I was very

happy. I think it was the happiest time of my life. I remember there was

a love-feast while I was on probation; and I sat down in front, right

beside her, and we ate the little square chunks of bread and drank the

water together, and I held one corner of her hymn-book when we stood up

and sang. That was the nearest I ever got to her, or to full membership

in the church. That very next week, I think it was, we learned that she

had got engaged to the minister's son--a young man who had just become

a minister himself. They got married, and went away--and I--somehow I

never took up my membership when the six months' probation was over.

That's how it was.”

“It is very interesting,” remarked Theron, softly, after a little

silence--“and very full of human nature.”

“Well, now you see,” said the lawyer, “what I mean when I say that there

hasn't been another minister here since, that I should have felt like

telling this story to. They wouldn't have understood it at all. They

would have thought it was blasphemy for me to say straight out that

what I took for experiencing religion was really a girl. But you are

different. I felt that at once, the first time I saw you. In a pulpit or

out of it, what I like in a human being is that he SHOULD be human.”

“It pleases me beyond measure that you should like me, then” returned

the young minister, with frank gratification shining on his face. “The

world is made all the sweeter and more lovable by these--these elements

of romance. I am not one of those who would wish to see them banished or

frowned upon. I don't mind admitting to you that there is a good deal in

Methodism--I mean the strict practice of its letter which you find here

in Octavius--that is personally distasteful to me. I read the other day

of an English bishop who said boldly, publicly, that no modern nation

could practise the principles laid down in the Sermon on the Mount and

survive for twenty-four hours.”

“Ha, ha! That's good!” laughed the lawyer.

“I felt that it was good, too,” pursued Theron. “I am getting to see

a great many things differently, here in Octavius. Our Methodist

Discipline is like the Beatitudes--very helpful and beautiful, if

treated as spiritual suggestion, but more or less of a stumbling-block

if insisted upon literally. I declare!” he added, sitting up in his

chair, “I never talked like this to a living soul before in all my life.

Your confidences were contagious.”

The Rev. Mr. Ware rose as he spoke, and took up his hat.

“Must you be going?” asked the lawyer, also rising. “Well, I'm glad I

haven't shocked you. Come in oftener when you are passing. And if you

see anything I can help you in, always tell me.”

The two men shook hands, with an emphatic and lingering clasp.

“I am glad,” said Theron, “that you didn't stop coming to church just

because you lost the girl.”

Levi Gorringe answered the minister's pleasantry with a smile which

curled his mustache upward, and expanded in little wrinkles at the ends

of his eyes. “No,” he said jestingly. “I'm death on collecting debts;

and I reckon that the church still owes me a girl. I'll have one yet.”

So, with merriment the echoes of which pleasantly accompanied Theron

down the stairway, the two men parted.

CHAPTER XIII

Though time lagged in passing with a slowness which seemed born of

studied insolence, there did arrive at last a day which had something

definitive about it to Theron's disturbed and restless mind. It was a

Thursday, and the prayer-meeting to be held that evening would be the

last before the Quarterly Conference, now only four days off.

For some reason, the young minister found himself dwelling upon this

fact, and investing it with importance. But yesterday the Quarterly

Conference had seemed a long way ahead. Today brought it alarmingly

close to hand. He had not heretofore regarded the weekly assemblage

for prayer and song as a thing calling for preparation, or for any

preliminary thought. Now on this Thursday morning he went to his desk

after breakfast, which was a sign that he wanted the room to himself,

quite as if he had the task of a weighty sermon before him. He sat at

the desk all the forenoon, doing no writing, it is true, but remembering

every once in a while, when his mind turned aside from the book in his

hands, that there was that prayer-meeting in the evening.

Sometimes he reached the point of vaguely wondering why this strictly

commonplace affair should be forcing itself thus upon his attention.

Then, with a kind of mental shiver at the recollection that this was

Thursday, and that the great struggle came on Monday, he would go back

to his book.

There were a half-dozen volumes on the open desk before him. He had

taken them out from beneath a pile of old “Sunday-School Advocates” and

church magazines, where they had lain hidden from Alice's view most of

the week. If there had been a locked drawer in the house, he would have

used it instead to hold these books, which had come to him in a neat

parcel, which also contained an amiable note from Dr. Ledsmar, recalling

a pleasant evening in May, and expressing the hope that the accompanying

works would be of some service. Theron had glanced at the backs of the

uppermost two, and discovered that their author was Renan. Then he had

hastily put the lot in the best place he could think of to escape his

wife's observation.

He realized now that there had been no need for this secrecy. Of the

other four books, by Sayce, Budge, Smith, and Lenormant, three indeed

revealed themselves to be published under religious auspices. As for

Renan, he might have known that the name would be meaningless to Alice.

The feeling that he himself was not much wiser in this matter than his

wife may have led him to pass over the learned text-books on Chaldean

antiquity, and even the volume of Renan which appeared to be devoted

to Oriental inscriptions, and take up his other book, entitled in

the translation, “Recollections of my Youth.” This he rather glanced

through, at the outset, following with a certain inattention the

introductory sketches and essays, which dealt with an unfamiliar, and,

to his notion, somewhat preposterous Breton racial type. Then, little by

little, it dawned upon him that there was a connected story in all this;

and suddenly he came upon it, out in the open, as it were. It was

the story of how a deeply devout young man, trained from his earliest

boyhood for the sacred office, and desiring passionately nothing but

to be worthy of it, came to a point where, at infinite cost of pain to

himself and of anguish to those dearest to him, he had to declare that

he could no longer believe at all in revealed religion.

Theron Ware read this all with an excited interest which no book had

ever stirred in him before. Much of it he read over and over again, to

make sure that he penetrated everywhere the husk of French habits of

thought and Catholic methods in which the kernel was wrapped. He broke

off midway in this part of the book to go out to the kitchen to dinner,

and began the meal in silence. To Alice's questions he replied briefly

that he was preparing himself for the evening's prayer-meeting. She

lifted her brows in such frank surprise at this that he made a further

and somewhat rambling explanation about having again taken up the work

on his book--the book about Abraham.

“I thought you said you'd given that up altogether,” she remarked.

“Well,” he said, “I WAS discouraged about it for a while. But a man

never does anything big without getting discouraged over and over again

while he's doing it. I don't say now that I shall write precisely

THAT book--I'm merely reading scientific works about the period, just

now--but if not that, I shall write some other book. Else how will you

get that piano?” he added, with an attempt at a smile.

“I thought you had given that up, too!” she replied ruefully. Then

before he could speak, she went on: “Never mind the piano; that can

wait. What I've got on my mind just now isn't piano; it's potatoes.

Do you know, I saw some the other day at Rasbach's, splendid

potatoes--these are some of them--and fifteen cents a bushel cheaper

than those dried-up old things Brother Barnum keeps, and so I bought two

bushels. And Sister Barnum met me on the street this morning, and threw

it in my face that the Discipline commands us to trade with each other.

Is there any such command?”

“Yes,” said the husband. “It's Section 33. Don't you remember? I looked

it up in Tyre. We are to 'evidence our desire of salvation by doing

good, especially to them that are of the household of faith, or groaning

so to be; by employing them preferably to others; buying one of another;

helping each other in business'--and so on. Yes, it's all there.”

“Well, I told her I didn't believe it was,” put in Alice, “and I said

that even if it was, there ought to be another section about selling

potatoes to their minister for more than they're worth--potatoes that

turn all green when you boil them, too. I believe I'll read up that old

Discipline myself, and see if it hasn't got some things that I can talk

back with.”

“The very section before that, Number 32, enjoins members against

'uncharitable or unprofitable conversation--particularly speaking evil

of magistrates or ministers.' You'd have 'em there, I think.” Theron had

begun cheerfully enough, but the careworn, preoccupied look returned now

to his face. “I'm sorry if we've fallen out with the Barnums,” he said.

“His brother-in-law, Davis, the Sunday-school superintendent, is a

member of the Quarterly Conference, you know, and I've been hoping that

he was on my side. I've been taking a good deal of pains to make up to

him.”

He ended with a sigh, the pathos of which impressed Alice. “If you think

it will do any good,” she volunteered, “I'll go and call on the Davises

this very afternoon. I'm sure to find her at home,--she's tied hand

and foot with that brood of hers--and you'd better give me some of that

candy for them.”

Theron nodded his approval and thanks, and relapsed into silence. When

the meal was over, he brought out the confectionery to his wife, and

without a word went back to that remarkable book.

When Alice returned toward the close of day, to prepare the simple tea

which was always laid a half-hour earlier on Thursdays and Sundays,

she found her husband where she had left him, still busy with those new

scientific works. She recounted to him some incidents of her call

upon Mrs. Davis, as she took off her hat and put on the big kitchen

apron--how pleased Mrs. Davis seemed to be; how her affection for

her sister-in-law, the grocer's wife, disclosed itself to be not even

skin-deep; how the children leaped upon the candy as if they had never

seen any before; and how, in her belief, Mr. Davis would be heart and

soul on Theron's side at the Conference.

To her surprise, the young minister seemed not at all interested.

He hardly looked at her during her narrative, but reclined in the

easy-chair with his head thrown back, and an abstracted gaze wandering

aimlessly about the ceiling. When she avowed her faith in the

Sunday-school superintendent's loyal partisanship, which she did with

a pardonable pride in having helped to make it secure, her husband even

closed his eyes, and moved his head with a gesture which plainly bespoke

indifference.

“I expected you'd be tickled to death,” she remarked, with evident

disappointment.

“I've a bad headache,” he explained, after a minute's pause.

“No wonder!” Alice rejoined, sympathetically enough, but with a note of

reproof as well. “What can you expect, staying cooped up in here all day

long, poring over those books? People are all the while remarking that

you study too much. I tell them, of course, that you're a great hand for

reading, and always were; but I think myself it would be better if you

got out more, and took more exercise, and saw people. You know lots

and slathers more than THEY do now, or ever will, if you never opened

another book.”

Theron regarded her with an expression which she had never seen on his

face before. “You don't realize what you are saying,” he replied slowly.

He sighed as he added, with increased gravity, “I am the most ignorant

man alive!”

Alice began a little laugh of wifely incredulity, and then let it die

away as she recognized that he was really troubled and sad in his mind.

She bent over to kiss him lightly on the brow, and tiptoed her way out

into the kitchen.

“I believe I will let you make my excuses at the prayer-meeting this

evening,” he said all at once, as the supper came to an end. He

had eaten next to nothing during the meal, and had sat in a sort of

brown-study from which Alice kindly forbore to arouse him. “I don't

know--I hardly feel equal to it. They won't take it amiss--for once--if

you explain to them that I--I am not at all well.”

“Oh, I do hope you're not coming down with anything!” Alice had risen

too, and was gazing at him with a solicitude the tenderness of which at

once comforted, and in some obscure way jarred on his nerves. “Is there

anything I can do--or shall I go for a doctor? We've got mustard in the

house, and senna--I think there's some senna left--and Jamaica ginger.”

Theron shook his head wearily at her. “Oh, no,--no!” he expostulated.

“It isn't anything that needs drugs, or doctors either. It's just mental

worry and fatigue, that's all. An evening's quiet rest in the big chair,

and early to bed--that will fix me up all right.”

“But you'll read; and that will make your head worse,” said Alice.

“No, I won't read any more,” he promised her, walking slowly into the

sitting-room, and settling himself in the big chair, the while she

brought out a pillow from the adjoining best bedroom, and adjusted it

behind his head. “That's nice! I'll just lie quiet here, and perhaps

doze a little till you come back. I feel in the mood for the rest; it

will do me all sorts of good.”

He closed his eyes; and Alice, regarding his upturned face anxiously,

decided that already it looked more at peace than awhile ago.

“Well, I hope you'll be better when I get back,” she said, as she began

preparations for the evening service. These consisted in combing

stiffly back the strands of light-brown hair which, during the day, had

exuberantly loosened themselves over her temples into something

almost like curls; in fastening down upon this rebellious hair a plain

brown-straw bonnet, guiltless of all ornament save a binding ribbon of

dull umber hue; and in putting on a thin dark-gray shawl and a pair

of equally subdued lisle-thread gloves. Thus attired, she made a

mischievous little grimace of dislike at her puritanical image in

the looking-glass over the mantel, and then turned to announce her

departure.

“Well, I'm off,” she said. Theron opened his eyes to take in this figure

of his wife dressed for prayer-meeting, and then closed them again

abruptly. “All right,” he murmured, and then he heard the door shut

behind her.

Although he had been alone all day, there seemed to be quite a unique

value and quality in this present solitude. He stretched out his legs on

the opposite chair, and looked lazily about him, with the feeling that

at last he had secured some leisure, and could think undisturbed to his

heart's content. There were nearly two hours of unbroken quiet before

him; and the mere fact of his having stepped aside from the routine of

his duty to procure it; marked it in his thoughts as a special occasion,

which ought in the nature of things to yield more than the ordinary

harvest of mental profit.

Theron's musings were broken in upon from time to time by rumbling

outbursts of hymn-singing from the church next door. Surely, he said to

himself, there could be no other congregation in the Conference, or in

all Methodism, which sang so badly as these Octavians did. The noise,

as it came to him now and again, divided itself familiarly into a main

strain of hard, high, sharp, and tinny female voices, with three or four

concurrent and clashing branch strains of part-singing by men who did

not know how. How well he already knew these voices! Through two wooden

walls he could detect the conceited and pushing note of Brother Lovejoy,

who tried always to drown the rest out, and the lifeless, unmeasured

weight of shrill clamor which Sister Barnum hurled into every chorus,

half closing her eyes and sticking out her chin as she did so. They

drawled their hymns too, these people, till Theron thought he understood

that injunction in the Discipline against singing too slowly. It had

puzzled him heretofore; now he felt that it must have been meant in

prophecy for Octavius.

It was impossible not to recall in contrast that other church music

he had heard, a month before, and the whole atmosphere of that other

pastoral sitting room, from which he had listened to it. The startled

and crowded impressions of that strange evening had been lying hidden

in his mind all this while, driven into a corner by the pressure of more

ordinary, everyday matters. They came forth now, and passed across

his brain--no longer confusing and distorted, but in orderly and

intelligible sequence. Their earlier effect had been one of frightened

fascination. Now he looked them over calmly as they lifted themselves,

one by one, and found himself not shrinking at all, or evading anything,

but dwelling upon each in turn as a natural and welcome part of the most

important experience of his life.

The young minister had arrived, all at once, at this conclusion. He did

not question at all the means by which he had reached it. Nothing was

clearer to his mind than the conclusion itself--that his meeting, with

the priest and the doctor was the turning-point in his career. They had

lifted him bodily out of the slough of ignorance, of contact with low

minds and sordid, narrow things, and put him on solid ground. This book

he had been reading--this gentle, tender, lovable book, which had as

much true piety in it as any devotional book he had ever read, and yet,

unlike all devotional books, put its foot firmly upon everything which

could not be proved in human reason to be true--must be merely one of a

thousand which men like Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar knew by heart. The

very thought that he was on the way now to know them, too, made Theron

tremble. The prospect wooed him, and he thrilled in response, with the

wistful and delicate eagerness of a young lover.

Somehow, the fact that the priest and the doctor were not religious men,

and that this book which had so impressed and stirred him was nothing

more than Renan's recital of how he, too, ceased to be a religious man,

did not take a form which Theron could look square in the face. It wore

the shape, instead, of a vague premise that there were a great many

different kinds of religions--the past and dead races had multiplied

these in their time literally into thousands--and that each no doubt had

its central support of truth somewhere for the good men who were in it,

and that to call one of these divine and condemn all the others was

a part fit only for untutored bigots. Renan had formally repudiated

Catholicism, yet could write in his old age with the deepest filial

affection of the Mother Church he had quitted. Father Forbes could talk

coolly about the “Christ-myth” without even ceasing to be a priest,

and apparently a very active and devoted priest. Evidently there was an

intellectual world, a world of culture and grace, of lofty thoughts

and the inspiring communion of real knowledge, where creeds were not of

importance, and where men asked one another, not “Is your soul saved?”

but “Is your mind well furnished?” Theron had the sensation of having

been invited to become a citizen of this world. The thought so dazzled

him that his impulses were dragging him forward to take the new oath

of allegiance before he had had time to reflect upon what it was he was

abandoning.

The droning of the Doxology from the church outside stirred Theron

suddenly out of his revery. It had grown quite dark, and he rose and lit

the gas. “Blest be the Tie that Binds,” they were singing. He paused,

with hand still in air, to listen. That well-worn phrase arrested his

attention, and gave itself a new meaning. He was bound to those people,

it was true, but he could never again harbor the delusion that the tie

between them was blessed. There was vaguely present in his mind the

consciousness that other ties were loosening as well. Be that as it

might, one thing was certain. He had passed definitely beyond pretending

to himself that there was anything spiritually in common between him and

the Methodist Church of Octavius. The necessity of his keeping up the

pretence with others rose on the instant like a looming shadow before

his mental vision. He turned away from it, and bent his brain to think

of something else.

The noise of Alice opening the front door came as a pleasant digression.

A second later it became clear from the sound of voices that she had

brought some one back with her, and Theron hastily stretched himself out

again in the armchair, with his head back in the pillow, and his feet

on the other chair. He had come mighty near forgetting that he was an

invalid, and he protected himself the further now by assuming an air of

lassitude verging upon prostration.

“Yes; there's a light burning. It's all right,” he heard Alice say. She

entered the room, and Theron's head was too bad to permit him to turn

it, and see who her companion was.

“Theron dear,” Alice began, “I knew you'd be glad to see HER, even if

you were out of sorts; and I persuaded her just to run in for a minute.

Let me introduce you to Sister Soulsby. Sister Soulsby--my husband.”

The Rev. Mr. Ware sat upright with an energetic start, and fastened upon

the stranger a look which conveyed anything but the satisfaction his

wife had been so sure about. It was at the first blush an undisguised

scowl, and only some fleeting memory of that reflection about needing

now to dissemble, prevented him from still frowning as he rose to his

feet, and perfunctorily held out his hand.

“Delighted, I'm sure,” he mumbled. Then, looking up, he discovered that

Sister Soulsby knew he was not delighted, and that she seemed not to

mind in the least.

“As your good lady said, I just ran in for a moment,” she remarked,

shaking his limp hand with a brisk, business-like grasp, and dropping

it. “I hate bothering sick people, but as we're to be thrown together

a good deal this next week or so, I thought I'd like to lose no time in

saying 'howdy.' I won't keep you up now. Your wife has been sweet enough

to ask me to move my trunk over here in the morning, so that you'll see

enough of me and to spare.”

Theron looked falteringly into her face, as he strove for words which

should sufficiently mask the disgust this intelligence stirred within

him. A debt-raiser in the town was bad enough! A debt-raiser quartered

in the very parsonage!--he ground his teeth to think of it.

Alice read his hesitation aright. “Sister Soulsby went to the hotel,”

she hastily put in; “and Loren Pierce was after her to come and stay at

his house, and I ventured to tell her that I thought we could make her

more comfortable here.” She accompanied this by so daring a grimace

and nod that her husband woke up to the fact that a point in Conference

politics was involved.

He squeezed a doubtful smile upon his features. “We shall both do our

best,” he said. It was not easy, but he forced increasing amiability

into his glance and tone. “Is Brother Soulsby here, too?” he asked.

The debt-raiser shook her head--again the prompt, decisive movement, so

like a busy man of affairs. “No,” she answered. “He's doing supply

down on the Hudson this week, but he'll be here in time for the Sunday

morning love-feast. I always like to come on ahead, and see how the land

lies. Well, good-night! Your head will be all right in the morning.”

Precisely what she meant by this assurance, Theron did not attempt to

guess. He received her adieu, noted the masterful manner in which

she kissed his wife, and watched her pass out into the hall, with the

feeling uppermost that this was a person who decidedly knew her way

about. Much as he was prepared to dislike her, and much as he detested

the vulgar methods her profession typified, he could not deny that she

seemed a very capable sort of woman.

This mental concession did not prevent his fixing upon Alice, when she

returned to the room, a glance of obvious disapproval.

“Theron,” she broke forth, to anticipate his reproach, “I did it for the

best. The Pierces would have got her if I hadn't cut in. I thought it

would help to have her on our side. And, besides, I like her. She's the

first sister I've seen since we've been in this hole that's had a kind

word for me--or--or sympathized with me! And--and--if you're going to be

offended--I shall cry!”

There were real tears on her lashes, ready to make good the threat.

“Oh, I guess I wouldn't,” said Theron, with an approach to his old,

half-playful manner. “If you like her, that's the chief thing.”

Alice shook her tear-drops away. “No,” she replied, with a wistful

smile; “the chief thing is to have her like you. She's as smart as a

steel trap--that woman is--and if she took the notion, I believe she

could help get us a better place.”

CHAPTER XIV

The ensuing week went by with a buzz and whirl, circling about Theron

Ware's dizzy consciousness like some huge, impalpable teetotum sent

spinning under Sister Soulsby's resolute hands. Whenever his vagrant

memory recurred to it, in after months, he began by marvelling, and

ended with a shudder of repulsion.

It was a week crowded with events, which seemed to him to shoot past

so swiftly that in effect they came all of a heap. He never essayed the

task, in retrospect, of arranging them in their order of sequence. They

had, however, a definite and interdependent chronology which it is worth

the while to trace.

Mrs. Soulsby brought her trunk round to the parsonage bright and early

on Friday morning, and took up her lodgement in the best bedroom,

and her headquarters in the house at large, with a cheerful and

business-like manner. She desired nothing so much, she said, as that

people should not put themselves out on her account, or allow her to

get in their way. She appeared to mean this, too, and to have very good

ideas about securing its realization.

During both Friday and the following day, indeed, Theron saw her only at

the family meals. There she displayed a hearty relish for all that was

set before her which quite won Mrs. Ware's heart, and though she talked

rather more than Theron found himself expecting from a woman, he could

not deny that her conversation was both seemly and entertaining. She had

evidently been a great traveller, and referred to things she had seen in

Savannah or Montreal or Los Angeles in as matter-of-fact fashion as

he could have spoken of a visit to Tecumseh. Theron asked her many

questions about these and other far-off cities, and her answers were

all so pat and showed so keen and clear an eye that he began in spite of

himself to think of her with a certain admiration.

She in turn plied him with inquiries about the principal pew-holders

and members of his congregation--their means, their disposition, and the

measure of their devotion. She put these queries with such intelligence,

and seemed to assimilate his replies with such an alert understanding,

that the young minister was spurred to put dashes of character in

his descriptions, and set forth the idiosyncrasies and distinguishing

earmarks of his flock with what he felt afterward might have been too

free a tongue. But at the time her fine air of appreciation led him

captive. He gossiped about his parishioners as if he enjoyed it. He

made a specially happy thumb-nail sketch for her of one of his trustees,

Erastus Winch, the loud-mouthed, ostentatiously jovial, and really

cold-hearted cheese-buyer. She was particularly interested in hearing

about this man. The personality of Winch seemed to have impressed her,

and she brought the talk back to him more than once, and prompted Theron

to the very threshold of indiscretion in his confidences on the subject.

Save at meal-times, Sister Soulsby spent the two days out around among

the Methodists of Octavius. She had little or nothing to say about

what she thus saw and heard, but used it as the basis for still further

inquiries. She told more than once, however, of how she had been pressed

here or there to stay to dinner or supper, and how she had excused

herself. “I've knocked about too much,” she would explain to the Wares,

“not to fight shy of random country cooking. When I find such a born

cook as you are--well I know when I'm well off.” Alice flushed with

pleased pride at this, and Theron himself felt that their visitor showed

great good sense. By Saturday noon, the two women were calling each

other by their first names. Theron learned with a certain interest that

Sister Soulsby's Christian name was Candace.

It was only natural that he should give even more thought to her than to

her quaint and unfamiliar old Ethiopian name. She was undoubtedly a very

smart woman. To his surprise she had never introduced in her talk any of

the stock religious and devotional phrases which official Methodists

so universally employed in mutual converse. She might have been an

insurance agent, or a school-teacher, visiting in a purely secular

household, so little parade of cant was there about her.

He caught himself wondering how old she was. She seemed to have been

pretty well over the whole American continent, and that must take years

of time. Perhaps, however, the exertion of so much travel would tend

to age one in appearance. Her eyes were still youthful--decidedly

wise eyes, but still juvenile. They had sparkled with almost girlish

merriment at some of his jokes. She turned them about a good deal when

she spoke, making their glances fit and illustrate the things she said.

He had never met any one whose eyes played so constant and prominent a

part in their owner's conversation. Theron had never seen a play; but

he had encountered the portraits of famous queens of the drama several

times in illustrated papers or shop windows, and it occurred to him that

some of the more marked contortions of Sister Soulsby's eyes--notably

a trick she had of rolling them swiftly round and plunging them, so to

speak, into an intent, yearning, one might almost say devouring, gaze

at the speaker--were probably employed by eminent actresses like Ristori

and Fanny Davenport.

The rest of Sister Soulsby was undoubtedly subordinated in interest to

those eyes of hers. Sometimes her face seemed to be reviving temporarily

a comeliness which had been constant in former days; then again it would

look decidedly, organically, plain. It was the worn and loose-skinned

face of a nervous, middle-aged woman, who had had more than her share of

trouble, and drank too much tea. She wore the collar of her dress rather

low; and Theron found himself wondering at this, because, though long

and expansive, her neck certainly showed more cords and cavities than

consorted with his vague ideal of statuesque beauty. Then he wondered at

himself for thinking about it, and abruptly reined up his fancy, only to

find that it was playing with speculations as to whether her yellowish

complexion was due to that tea-drinking or came to her as a legacy of

Southern blood.

He knew that she was born in the South because she said so. From the

same source he learned that her father had been a wealthy planter, who

was ruined by the war, and sank into a premature grave under the weight

of his accumulated losses. The large dark rings around her eyes

grew deeper still in their shadows when she told about this, and her

ordinarily sharp voice took on a mellow cadence, with a soft, drawling

accent, turning U's into O's, and having no R's to speak of. Theron had

imbibed somewhere in early days the conviction that the South was the

land of romance, of cavaliers and gallants and black eyes flashing

behind mantillas and outspread fans, and somehow when Sister Soulsby

used this intonation she suggested all these things.

But almost all her talk was in another key--a brisk, direct, idiomatic

manner of speech, with an intonation hinting at no section in

particular. It was merely that of the city-dweller as distinguished from

the rustic. She was of about Alice's height, perhaps a shade taller.

It did not escape the attention of the Wares that she wore clothes of a

more stylish cut and a livelier arrangement of hues than any Alice had

ever dared own, even in lax-minded Tyre. The two talked of this in their

room on Friday night; and Theron explained that congregations would

tolerate things of this sort with a stranger which would be sharply

resented in the case of local folk whom they controlled. It was on this

occasion that Alice in turn told Theron she was sure Mrs. Soulsby had

false teeth--a confidence which she immediately regretted as an act of

treachery to her sex.

On Saturday afternoon, toward evening, Brother Soulsby arrived, and was

guided to the parsonage by his wife, who had gone to the depot to meet

him. They must have talked over the situation pretty thoroughly on the

way, for by the time the new-comer had washed his face and hands and

put on a clean collar, Sister Soulsby was ready to announce her plan of

campaign in detail.

Her husband was a man of small stature and, like herself, of uncertain

age. He had a gentle, if rather dry, clean-shaven face, and wore his

dust-colored hair long behind. His little figure was clad in black

clothes of a distinctively clerical fashion, and he had a white

neck-cloth neatly tied under his collar. The Wares noted that he looked

clean and amiable rather than intellectually or spiritually powerful, as

he took the vacant seat between theirs, and joined them in concentrating

attention upon Mrs. Soulsby.

This lady, holding herself erect and alert on the edge of the low, big

easy-chair had the air of presiding over a meeting.

“My idea is,” she began, with an easy implication that no one else's

idea was needed, “that your Quarterly Conference, when it meets on

Monday, must be adjourned to Tuesday. We will have the people all out

tomorrow morning to love-feast, and announcement can be made there, and

at the morning service afterward, that a series of revival meetings are

to be begun that same evening. Mr. Soulsby and I can take charge in the

evening, and we'll see to it that THAT packs the house--fills the church

to overflowing Monday evening. Then we'll quietly turn the meeting into

a debt-raising convention, before they know where they are, and we'll

wipe off the best part of the load. Now, don't you see,” she turned her

eyes full upon Theron as she spoke, “you want to hold your Quarterly

Conference AFTER this money's been raised, not before.”

“I see what you mean,” Mr. Ware responded gravely. “But--”

“But what!” Sister Soulsby interjected, with vivacity.

“Well,” said Theron, picking his words, “in the first place, it rests

with the Presiding Elder to say whether an adjournment can be made until

Tuesday, not with me.”

“That's all right. Leave that to me,” said the lady.

“In the second place,” Theron went on, still more hesitatingly, “there

seems a certain--what shall I say?--indirection in--in--”

“In getting them together for a revival, and springing a debt-raising on

them?” Sister Soulsby put in. “Why, man alive, that's the best part of

it. You ought to be getting some notion by this time what these Octavius

folks of yours are like. I've only been here two days, but I've got

their measure down to an allspice. Supposing you were to announce

tomorrow that the debt was to be raised Monday. How many men with

bank-accounts would turn up, do you think? You could put them all in

your eye, sir--all in your eye!”

“Very possibly you're right,” faltered the young minister.

“Right? Why, of course I'm right,” she said, with placid confidence.

“You've got to take folks as you find them; and you've got to find them

the best way you can. One place can be worked, managed, in one way,

and another needs quite a different way, and both ways would be dead

frosts--complete failures--in a third.”

Brother Soulsby coughed softly here, and shuffled his feet for an

instant on the carpet. His wife resumed her remarks with slightly abated

animation, and at a slower pace.

“My experience,” she said, “has shown me that the Apostle was right.

To properly serve the cause, one must be all things to all men. I have

known very queer things indeed turn out to be means of grace. You

simply CAN'T get along without some of the wisdom of the serpent. We are

commanded to have it, for that matter. And now, speaking of that, do

you know when the Presiding Elder arrives in town today, and where he is

going to eat supper and sleep?”

Theron shook his head. “All I know is he isn't likely to come here,” he

said, and added sadly, “I'm afraid he's not an admirer of mine.”

“Perhaps that's not all his fault,” commented Sister Soulsby. “I'll tell

you something. He came in on the same train as my husband, and that old

trustee Pierce of yours was waiting for him with his buggy, and I saw

like a flash what was in the wind, and the minute the train stopped I

caught the Presiding Elder, and invited him in your name to come

right here and stay; told him you and Alice were just set on his

coming--wouldn't take no for an answer. Of course he couldn't come--I

knew well enough he had promised old Pierce--but we got in our

invitation anyway, and it won't do you any harm. Now, that's what I call

having some gumption--wisdom of the serpent, and so on.”

“I'm sure,” remarked Alice, “I should have been mortified to death if he

had come. We lost the extension-leaf to our table in moving, and four is

all it'll seat decently.”

Sister Soulsby smiled winningly into the wife's honest face. “Don't you

see, dear,” she explained patiently, “I only asked him because I knew

he couldn't come. A little butter spreads a long way, if it's only

intelligently warmed.”

“It was certainly very ingenious of you,” Theron began almost stiffly.

Then he yielded to the humanities, and with a kindling smile added,

“And it was as kind as kind could be. I'm afraid you're wrong about

it's doing me any good, but I can see how well you meant it, and I'm

grateful.”

“We COULD have sneaked in the kitchen table, perhaps, while he was out

in the garden, and put on the extra long tablecloth,” interjected Alice,

musingly.

Sister Soulsby smiled again at Sister Ware, but without any words this

time; and Alice on the instant rose, with the remark that she must be

going out to see about supper.

“I'm going to insist on coming out to help you,” Mrs. Soulsby declared,

“as soon as I've talked over one little matter with your husband. Oh,

yes, you must let me this time. I insist!”

As the kitchen door closed behind Mrs. Ware, a swift and apparently

significant glance shot its way across from Sister Soulsby's roving,

eloquent eyes to the calmer and smaller gray orbs of her husband. He

rose to his feet, made some little explanation about being a gardener

himself, and desiring to inspect more closely some rhododendrons he had

noticed in the garden, and forthwith moved decorously out by the other

door into the front hall. They heard his footsteps on the gravel beneath

the window before Mrs. Soulsby spoke again.

“You're right about the Presiding Elder, and you're wrong,” she said.

“He isn't what one might call precisely in love with you. Oh, I know the

story--how you got into debt at Tyre, and he stepped in and insisted on

your being denied Tecumseh and sent here instead.”

“HE was responsible for that, then, was he?” broke in Theron, with

contracted brows.

“Why, don't you make any effort to find out anything at ALL?” she asked

pertly enough, but with such obvious good-nature that he could not but

have pleasure in her speech. “Why, of course he did it! Who else did you

suppose?”

“Well,” said the young minister, despondently, “if he's as much against

me as all that, I might as well hang up my fiddle and go home.”

Sister Soulsby gave a little involuntary groan of impatience. She

bent forward, and, lifting her eyes, rolled them at him in a curve of

downward motion which suggested to his fancy the image of two eagles in

a concerted pounce upon a lamb.

“My friend,” she began, with a new note of impressiveness in her voice,

“if you'll pardon my saying it, you haven't got the spunk of a mouse.

If you're going to lay down, and let everybody trample over you just as

they please, you're right! You MIGHT as well go home. But now here, this

is what I wanted to say to you: Do you just keep your hands off these

next few days, and leave this whole thing to me. I'll pull it into

shipshape for you. No--wait a minute--don't interrupt now. I have taken

a liking to you. You've got brains, and you've got human nature in you,

and heart. What you lack is SABE--common-sense. You'll get that, too, in

time, and meanwhile I'm not going to stand by and see you cut up and fed

to the dogs for want of it. I'll get you through this scrape, and put

you on your feet again, right-side-up-with care, because, as I said, I

like you. I like your wife, too, mind. She's a good, honest little soul,

and she worships the very ground you tread on. Of course, as long as

people WILL marry in their teens, the wrong people will get yoked up

together. But that's neither here nor there. She's a kind sweet little

body, and she's devoted to you, and it isn't every intellectual man

that gets even that much. But now it's a go, is it? You promise to keep

quiet, do you, and leave the whole show absolutely to me? Shake hands on

it.”

Sister Soulsby had risen, and stood now holding out her hand in a frank,

manly fashion. Theron looked at the hand, and made mental notes that

there were a good many veins discernible on the small wrist, and that

the forearm seemed to swell out more than would have been expected in a

woman producing such a general effect of leanness. He caught the

shine of a thin bracelet-band of gold under the sleeve. A delicate,

significant odor just hinted its presence in the air about this

outstretched arm--something which was not a perfume, yet deserved as

gracious a name.

He rose to his feet, and took the proffered hand with a deliberate

gesture, as if he had been cautiously weighing all the possible

arguments for and against this momentous compact.

“I promise,” he said gravely, and the two palms squeezed themselves

together in an earnest clasp.

“Right you are,” exclaimed the lady, once more with cheery vivacity.

“Mind, when it's all over, I'm going to give you a good, serious,

downright talking to--a regular hoeing-over. I'm not sure I shan't give

you a sound shaking into the bargain. You need it. And now I'm going out

to help Alice.”

The Reverend Mr. Ware remained standing after his new friend had

left the room, and his meditative face wore an even unusual air of

abstraction. He strolled aimlessly over, after a time, to the desk by

the window, and stood there looking out at the slight figure of Brother

Soulsby, who was bending over and attentively regarding some pink

blossoms on a shrub through what seemed to be a pocket magnifying-glass.

What remained uppermost in his mind was not this interesting woman's

confident pledge of championship in his material difficulties. He found

himself dwelling instead upon her remark about the incongruous results

of early marriages. He wondered idly if the little man in the white

tie, fussing out there over that rhododendron-bush, had figured in her

thoughts as an example of these evils. Then he reflected that they had

been mentioned in clear relation to talk about Alice.

Now that he faced this question, it was as if he had been consciously

ignoring and putting it aside for a long time. How was it, he asked

himself now, that Alice, who had once seemed so bright and keen-witted,

who had in truth started out immeasurably his superior in swiftness of

apprehension and readiness in humorous quips and conceits, should

have grown so dull? For she was undoubtedly slow to understand things

nowadays. Her absurd lugging in of the extension-table problem, when

the great strategic point of that invitation foisted upon the

Presiding Elder came up, was only the latest sample of a score of these

heavy-minded exhibitions that recalled themselves to him. And outsiders

were apparently beginning to notice it. He knew by intuition what

those phrases, “good, honest little soul” and “kind, sweet little body”

signified, when another woman used them to a husband about his wife. The

very employment of that word “little” was enough, considering that there

was scarcely more than a hair's difference between Mrs. Soulsby and

Alice, and that they were both rather tall than otherwise, as the

stature of women went.

What she had said about the chronic misfortunes of intellectual men in

such matters gave added point to those meaning phrases. Nobody could

deny that geniuses and men of conspicuous talent had as a rule, all

through history, contracted unfortunate marriages. In almost every case

where their wives were remembered at all, it was on account of their

abnormal stupidity, or bad temper, or something of that sort. Take

Xantippe, for example, and Shakespeare's wife, and--and--well, there was

Byron, and Bulwer-Lytton, and ever so many others.

Of course there was nothing to be done about it. These things happened,

and one could only put the best possible face on them, and live one's

appointed life as patiently and contentedly as might be. And Alice

undoubtedly merited all the praise which had been so generously bestowed

upon her. She was good and honest and kindly, and there could be no

doubt whatever as to her utter devotion to him. These were tangible,

solid qualities, which must always secure respect for her. It was true

that she no longer seemed to be very popular among people. He questioned

whether men, for instance, like Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar would care

much about her. Visions of the wifeless and academic calm in which

these men spent their lives--an existence consecrated to literature and

knowledge and familiarity with all the loftiest and noblest thoughts of

the past--rose and enveloped him in a cloud of depression. No such

lot would be his! He must labor along among ignorant and spiteful

narrow-minded people to the end of his days, pocketing their insults and

fawning upon the harsh hands of jealous nonentities who happened to

be his official masters, just to keep a roof over his head--or rather

Alice's. He must sacrifice everything to this, his ambitions, his

passionate desires to do real good in the world on a large scale,

his mental freedom, yes, even his chance of having truly elevating,

intellectual friendships. For it was plain enough that the men whose

friendship would be of genuine and stimulating profit to him would not

like her. Now that he thought of it, she seemed latterly to make no

friends at all.

Suddenly, as he watched in a blank sort of way Brother Soulsby take

out a penknife, and lop an offending twig from a rose-bush against the

fence, something occurred to him. There was a curious exception to

that rule of Alice's isolation. She had made at least one friend. Levi

Gorringe seemed to like her extremely.

As if his mind had been a camera, Theron snapped a shutter down upon

this odd, unbidden idea, and turned away from the window.

The sounds of an active, almost strenuous conversation in female voices

came from the kitchen. Theron opened the door noiselessly, and put in

his head, conscious of something furtive in his intention.

“You must dreen every drop of water off the spinach, mind, before you

put it over, or else--”

It was Sister Soulsby's sharp and penetrating tones which came to him.

Theron closed the door again, and surrendered himself once more to the

circling whirl of his thoughts.

CHAPTER XV

A love-feast at nine in the morning opened the public services of a

Sunday still memorable in the annals of Octavius Methodism.

This ceremony, which four times a year preceded the sessions of the

Quarterly Conference, was not necessarily an event of importance. It

was an occasion upon which the brethren and sisters who clung to the

old-fashioned, primitive ways of the itinerant circuit-riders, let

themselves go with emphasized independence, putting up more vehement

prayers than usual, and adding a special fervor of noise to their

“Amens!” and other interjections--and that was all.

It was Theron's first love-feast in Octavius, and as the big class-room

in the church basement began to fill up, and he noted how the men with

ultra radical views and the women clad in the most ostentatious drabs

and grays were crowding into the front seats, he felt his spirits

sinking. He had literally to force himself from sentence to sentence,

when the time came for him to rise and open the proceedings with an

exhortation. He had eagerly offered this function to the Presiding

Elder, the Rev. Aziel P. Larrabee, who sat in severe silence on the

little platform behind him, but had been informed that the dignitary

would lead off in giving testimony later on. So Theron, feeling all the

while the hostile eyes of the Elder burning holes in his back, dragged

himself somehow through the task. He had never known any such difficulty

of speech before. The relief was almost overwhelming when he came to

the customary part where all are adjured to be as brief as possible in

witnessing for the Lord, because the time belongs to all the people, and

the Discipline forbids the feast to last more than ninety minutes. He

delivered this injunction to brevity with marked earnestness, and then

sat down abruptly.

There was some rather boisterous singing, during which the stewards,

beginning with the platform, passed plates of bread cut in small

cubes, and water in big plated pitchers and tumblers, about among

the congregation, threading their way between the long wooden benches

ordinarily occupied at this hour by the children of the Sunday-school,

and helping each brother and sister in turn. They held by the old

custom, here in Octavius, and all along the seats the sexes alternated,

as they do at a polite dinner-table.

Theron impassively watched the familiar scene. The early nervousness had

passed away. He felt now that he was not in the least afraid of these

people, even with the Presiding Elder thrown in. Folks who sang with

such unintelligence, and who threw themselves with such undignified

fervor into this childish business of the bread and water, could not

be formidable antagonists for a man of intellect. He had never realized

before what a spectacle the Methodist love-feast probably presented to

outsiders. What must they think of it!

He had noticed that the Soulsbys sat together, in the centre and toward

the front. Next to Brother Soulsby sat Alice. He thought she looked pale

and preoccupied, and set it down in passing to her innate distaste for

the somber garments she was wearing, and for the company she perforce

found herself in. Another head was in the way, and for a time Theron did

not observe who sat beside Alice on the other side. When at last he saw

that it was Levi Gorringe, his instinct was to wonder what the lawyer

must be saying to himself about these noisy and shallow enthusiasts. A

recurring emotion of loyalty to the simple people among whom, after all,

he had lived his whole life, prompted him to feel that it wasn't wholly

nice of Gorringe to come and enjoy this revelation of their foolish

side, as if it were a circus. There was some vague memory in his mind

which associated Gorringe with other love-feasts, and with a cynical

attitude toward them. Oh, yes! he had told how he went to one just for

the sake of sitting beside the girl he admired--and was pursuing.

The stewards had completed their round, and the loud, discordant singing

came to an end. There ensued a little pause, during which Theron turned

to the Presiding Elder with a gesture of invitation to take charge

of the further proceedings. The Elder responded with another gesture,

calling his attention to something going on in front.

Brother and Sister Soulsby, to the considerable surprise of everybody,

had risen to their feet, and were standing in their places, quite

motionless, and with an air of professional self-assurance dimly

discernible under a large show of humility. They stood thus until

complete silence had been secured. Then the woman, lifting her head,

began to sing. The words were “Rock of Ages,” but no one present had

heard the tune to which she wedded them. Her voice was full and very

sweet, and had in it tender cadences which all her hearers found

touching. She knew how to sing, and she put forth the words so that each

was distinctly intelligible. There came a part where Brother Soulsby,

lifting his head in turn, took up a tuneful second to her air. Although

the two did not, as one could hear by listening closely, sing the same

words at the same time, they produced none the less most moving and

delightful harmonies of sound.

The experience was so novel and charming that listeners ran ahead in

their minds to fix the number of verses there were in the hymn, and

to hope that none would be left out. Toward the end, when some of the

intolerably self-conceited local singers, fancying they had caught the

tune, started to join in, they were stopped by an indignant “sh-h!”

which rose from all parts of the class-room; and the Soulsbys, with a

patient and pensive kindliness written on their uplifted faces, gave

that verse over again.

What followed seemed obviously restrained and modified by the effect of

this unlooked-for and tranquillizing overture. The Presiding Elder

was known to enjoy visits to old-fashioned congregations like that

of Octavius, where he could indulge to the full his inner passion for

high-pitched passionate invocations and violent spiritual demeanor, but

this time he spoke temperately, almost soothingly. The most tempestuous

of the local witnesses for the Lord gave in their testimony in

relatively pacific tones, under the influence of the spell which good

music had laid upon the gathering. There was the deepest interest as to

what the two visitors would do in this way. Brother Soulsby spoke first,

very briefly and in well rounded and well-chosen, if conventional,

phrases. His wife, following him, delivered in a melodious monotone some

equally hackneyed remarks. The assemblage, listening in rapt attention,

felt the suggestion of reserved power in every sentence she uttered, and

burst forth, as she dropped into her seat, in a loud chorus of approving

ejaculations. The Soulsbys had captured Octavius with their first outer

skirmish line.

Everything seemed to move forward now with a new zest and spontaneity.

Theron had picked out for the occasion the best of those sermons which

he had prepared in Tyre, at the time when he was justifying his ambition

to be accounted a pulpit orator. It was orthodox enough, but had been

planned as the framework for picturesque and emotional rhetoric rather

than doctrinal edification. He had never dreamed of trying it on

Octavius before, and only on the yesterday had quavered at his own

daring in choosing it now. Nothing but the desire to show Sister Soulsby

what was in him had held him to the selection.

Something of this same desire no doubt swayed and steadied him now in

the pulpit. The labored slowness of his beginning seemed to him to be

due to nervous timidity, until suddenly, looking down into those big

eyes of Sister Soulsby's, which were bent gravely upon him from where

she sat beside Alice in the minister's pew, he remembered that it was

instead the studied deliberation which art had taught him. He went on,

feeling more and more that the skill and histrionic power of his best

days were returning to him, were as marked as ever--nay, had never

triumphed before as they were triumphing now. The congregation watched

and listened with open, steadfast eyes and parted lips. For the first

time in all that weary quarter, their faces shone. The sustaining

sparkle of their gaze lifted him to a peroration unrivalled in his own

recollection of himself.

He sat down, and bent his head forward upon the open Bible, breathing

hard, but suffused with a glow of satisfaction. His ears caught the

music of that sighing rustle through the audience which bespeaks a

profound impression. He could scarcely keep the fingers of his hands,

covering his bowed face in a devotional posture as they were, from

drumming a jubilant tattoo. His pulses did this in every vein, throbbing

with excited exultation. The insistent whim seized him, as he still

bent thus before his people, to whisper to his own heart, “At last!--The

dogs!”

The announcement that in the evening a series of revival meetings was to

be inaugurated, had been made at the love-feast, and it was repeated

now from the pulpit, with the added statement that for the once

the class-meetings usually following this morning service would be

suspended. Then Theron came down the steps, conscious after a fashion

that the Presiding Elder had laid a propitiatory hand on his shoulder

and spoken amiably about the sermon, and that several groups of more or

less important parishioners were waiting in the aisle and the vestibule

to shake hands and tell him how much they had enjoyed the sermon. His

mind perversely kept hold of the thought that all this came too late. He

politely smiled his way along out, and, overtaking the Soulsbys and his

wife near the parsonage gate, went in with them.

At the cold, picked-up noonday meal which was the Sunday rule of the

house, Theron rather expected that his guests would talk about the

sermon, or at any rate about the events of the morning. A Sabbath chill

seemed to have settled upon both their tongues. They ate almost in

silence, and their sparse remarks touched upon topics far removed from

church affairs. Alice too, seemed strangely disinclined to conversation.

The husband knew her face and its varying moods so well that he could

see she was laboring under some very powerful and deep emotion. No doubt

it was the sermon, the oratorical swing of which still tingled in his

own blood, that had so affected her. If she had said so, it would have

pleased him, but she said nothing.

After dinner, Brother Soulsby disappeared in his bedroom, with the

remark that he guessed he would lie down awhile. Sister Soulsby put

on her bonnet, and, explaining that she always prepared herself for an

evening's work by a long solitary walk, quitted the house. Alice, after

she had put the dinner things away, went upstairs, and stayed there.

Left to himself, Theron spent the afternoon in the easy-chair, and,

in the intervals of confused introspection, read “Recollections of my

Youth” through again from cover to cover.

He went through the remarkable experiences attending the opening of the

revival, when evening came, as one in a dream. Long before the hour for

the service arrived, the sexton came in to tell him that the church was

already nearly full, and that it was going to be impossible to present

any distinction in the matter of pews. When the party from the parsonage

went over--after another cold and mostly silent meal--it was to find the

interior of the church densely packed, and people being turned away from

the doors.

Theron was supposed to preside over what followed, and he did sit on

the central chair in the pulpit, between the Presiding Elder and Brother

Soulsby, and on the several needful occasions did rise and perfunctorily

make the formal remarks required of him. The Elder preached a short,

but vigorously phrased sermon. The Soulsbys sang three or four times--on

each occasion with familiar hymnal words set to novel, concerted

music--and then separately exhorted the assemblage. The husband's part

seemed well done. If his speech lacked some of the fire of the divine

girdings which older Methodists recalled, it still led straight, and

with kindling fervency, up to a season of power. The wife took up the

word as he sat down. She had risen from one of the side-seats; and,

speaking as she walked, she moved forward till she stood within the

altar-rail, immediately under the pulpit, and from this place, facing

the listening throng, she delivered her harangue. Those who watched

her words most intently got the least sense of meaning from them.

The phrases were all familiar enough--“Jesus a very present help,”

“Sprinkled by the Blood,” “Comforted by the Word,” “Sanctified by the

Spirit,” “Born into the Kingdom,” and a hundred others--but it was as in

the case of her singing: the words were old; the music was new.

What Sister Soulsby said did not matter. The way she said it--the

splendid, searching sweep of her great eyes; the vibrating roll of

her voice, now full of tears, now scornful, now boldly, jubilantly

triumphant; the sympathetic swaying of her willowy figure under the

stress of her eloquence--was all wonderful. When she had finished, and

stood, flushed and panting, beneath the shadow of the pulpit, she

held up a hand deprecatingly as the resounding “Amens!” and “Bless the

Lords!” began to well up about her.

“You have heard us sing,” she said, smiling to apologize for her

shortness of breath. “Now we want to hear you sing!”

Her husband had risen as she spoke, and on the instant, with a far

greater volume of voice than they had hitherto disclosed, the two began

“From Greenland's Icy Mountains,” in the old, familiar tune. It did

not need Sister Soulsby's urgent and dramatic gesture to lift people to

their feet. The whole assemblage sprang up, and, under the guidance of

these two powerful leading voices, thundered the hymn out as Octavius

had never heard it before.

While its echoes were still alive, the woman began speaking again.

“Don't sit down!” she cried. “You would stand up if the President of the

United States was going by, even if he was only going fishing. How much

more should you stand up in honor of living souls passing forward to

find their Saviour!”

The psychological moment was upon them. Groans and cries arose, and

a palpable ferment stirred the throng. The exhortation to sinners

to declare themselves, to come to the altar, was not only on the

revivalist's lips: it seemed to quiver in the very air, to be borne on

every inarticulate exclamation in the clamor of the brethren. A young

woman, with a dazed and startled look in her eyes, rose in the body of

the church tremblingly hesitated for a moment, and then, with bowed head

and blushing cheeks, pressed her way out from the end of a crowded

pew and down the aisle to the rail. A triumphant outburst of welcoming

ejaculations swelled to the roof as she knelt there, and under its

impetus others followed her example. With interspersed snatches of song

and shouted encouragements the excitement reached its height only when

twoscore people, mostly young, were tightly clustered upon their knees

about the rail, and in the space opening upon the aisle. Above the

confusion of penitential sobs and moans, and the hysterical murmurings

of members whose conviction of entire sanctity kept them in their seats,

could be heard the voices of the Presiding Elder, the Soulsbys, and

the elderly deacons of the church, who moved about among the kneeling

mourners, bending over them and patting their shoulders, and calling

out to them: “Fasten your thoughts on Jesus!” “Oh, the Precious Blood!”

“Blessed be His Name!” “Seek Him, and you shall find Him!” “Cling to

Jesus, and Him Crucified!”

The Rev. Theron Ware did not, with the others, descend from the pulpit.

Seated where he could not see Sister Soulsby, he had failed utterly to

be moved by the wave of enthusiasm she had evoked. What he heard her say

disappointed him. He had expected from her more originality, more spice

of her own idiomatic, individual sort. He viewed with a cold sense of

aloofness the evidences of her success when they began to come forward

and abase themselves at the altar. The instant resolve that, come what

might, he would not go down there among them, sprang up ready-made in

his mind. He saw his two companions pass him and descend the pulpit

stairs, and their action only hardened his resolution. If an excuse were

needed, he was presiding, and the place to preside in was the pulpit.

But he waived in his mind the whole question of an excuse.

After a little, he put his hand over his face, leaning the elbow forward

on the reading-desk. The scene below would have thrilled him to the

marrow six months--yes, three months ago. He put a finger across his

eyes now, to half shut it out. The spectacle of these silly young

“mourners”--kneeling they knew not why, trembling at they could not tell

what, pledging themselves frantically to dogmas and mysteries they knew

nothing of, under the influence of a hubbub of outcries as meaningless

in their way, and inspiring in much the same way, as the racket of a

fife and drum corps--the spectacle saddened and humiliated him now.

He was conscious of a dawning sense of shame at being even tacitly

responsible for such a thing. His fancy conjured up the idea of Dr.

Ledsmar coming in and beholding this maudlin and unseemly scene, and he

felt his face grow hot at the bare thought.

Looking through his fingers, Theron all at once saw something which

caught at his breath with a sharp clutch. Alice had risen from the

minister's pew--the most conspicuous one in the church--and was moving

down the aisle toward the rail, her uplifted face chalk-like in its

whiteness, and her eyes wide-open, looking straight ahead.

The young pastor could scarcely credit his sight. He thrust aside his

hand, and bent forward, only to see his wife sink upon her knees among

the rest, and to hear this notable accession to the “mourners” hailed

by a tumult of approving shouts. Then, remembering himself, he drew back

and put up his hand, shutting out the strange scene altogether. To see

nothing at all was a relief, and under cover he closed his eyes, and bit

his teeth together.

A fresh outburst of thanksgivings, spreading noisily through the

congregation, prompted him to peer through his fingers again. Levi

Gorringe was making his way down the aisle--was at the moment quite in

front. Theron found himself watching this man with the stern composure

of a fatalist. The clamant brethren down below were stirred to new

excitement by the thought that the sceptical lawyer, so long with them,

yet not of them, had been humbled and won by the outpourings of the

Spirit. Theron's perceptions were keener. He knew that Gorringe was

coming forward to kneel beside Alice; The knowledge left him curiously

undisturbed. He saw the lawyer advance, gently insinuate himself past

the form of some kneeling mourner who was in his way, and drop on his

knees close beside the bowed figure of Alice. The two touched shoulders

as they bent forward beneath Sister Soulsby's outstretched hands, held

over them as in a blessing. Theron looked fixedly at them, and professed

to himself that he was barely interested.

A little afterward, he was standing up in his place, and reading aloud

a list of names which one of the stewards had given him. They were the

names of those who had asked that evening to be taken into the church

as members on probation. The sounds of the recent excitement were all

hushed now, save as two or three enthusiasts in a corner raised their

voices in abrupt greeting of each name in its turn, but Theron felt

somehow that this noise had been transferred to the inside of his head.

A continuous buzzing went on there, so that the sound of his voice was

far-off and unfamiliar in his ears.

He read through the list--comprising some fifteen items--and pronounced

the names with great distinctness. It was necessary to take pains with

this, because the only name his blurred eyes seemed to see anywhere on

the foolscap sheet was that of Levi Gorringe. When he had finished and

was taking his seat, some one began speaking to him from the body of the

church. He saw that this was the steward, who was explaining to him that

the most important name of the lot--that of Brother Gorringe--had not

been read out.

Theron smiled and shook his head. Then, when the Presiding Elder touched

him on the arm, and assured him that he had not mentioned the name in

question, he replied quite simply, and with another smile, “I thought it

was the only name I did read out.”

Then he sat down abruptly, and let his head fall to one side. There

were hurried movements inside the pulpit, and people in the audience had

begun to stand up wonderingly, when the Presiding Elder, with uplifted

hands, confronted them.

“We will omit the Doxology, and depart quietly after the benediction,”

he said. “Brother Ware seems to have been overcome by the heat.”

CHAPTER XVI