When Theron woke next morning, Alice seemed to have dressed and left the

room--a thing which had never happened before.

This fact connected itself at once in his brain with the recollection

of her having made an exhibition of herself the previous evening--going

forward before all eyes to join the unconverted and penitent sinners, as

if she were some tramp or shady female, instead of an educated lady, a

professing member from her girlhood, and a minister's wife. It crossed

his mind that probably she had risen and got away noiselessly, for very

shame at looking him in the face, after such absurd behavior.

Then he remembered more, and grasped the situation. He had fainted in

church, and had been brought home and helped to bed. Dim memories of

unaccustomed faces in the bedroom, of nauseous drugs and hushed voices,

came to him out of the night-time. Now that he thought of it, he was a

sick man. Having settled this, he went off to sleep again, a feverish

and broken sleep, and remained in this state most of the time for the

following twenty-four hours. In the brief though numerous intervals of

waking, he found certain things clear in his mind. One was that he was

annoyed with Alice, but would dissemble his feelings. Another was that

it was much pleasanter to be ill than to be forced to attend and take

part in those revival meetings. These two ideas came and went in a lazy,

drowsy fashion, mixing themselves up with other vagrant fancies, yet

always remaining on top.

In the evening the singing from the church next door filled his room.

The Soulsbys' part of it was worth keeping awake for. He turned over and

deliberately dozed when the congregation sang.

Alice came up a number of times during the day to ask how he felt, and

to bring him broth or toast-water. On several occasions, when he heard

her step, the perverse inclination mastered him to shut his eyes, and

pretend to be asleep, so that she might tip-toe out again. She had a

depressed and thoughtful air, and spoke to him like one whose mind was

on something else. Neither of them alluded to what had happened the

previous evening. Toward the close of the long day, she came to ask him

whether he would prefer her to remain in the house, instead of attending

the meeting.

“Go, by all means,” he said almost curtly.

The Presiding Elder and the Sunday-school superintendent called early

Tuesday morning at the parsonage to make brotherly inquiries, and

Theron was feeling so much better that he himself suggested their

coming upstairs to see him. The Elder was in good spirits; he

smiled approvingly, and even put in a jocose word or two while the

superintendent sketched for the invalid in a cheerful way the leading

incidents of the previous evening.

There had been an enormous crowd, even greater than that of Sunday

night, and everybody had been looking forward to another notable and

exciting season of grace. These expectations were especially heightened

when Sister Soulsby ascended the pulpit stairs and took charge of the

proceedings. She deferred to Paul's views about women preachers on

Sundays, she said; but on weekdays she had just as much right to snatch

brands from the burning as Paul, or Peter, or any other man. She went

on like that, in a breezy, off-hand fashion which tickled the audience

immensely, and led to the liveliest anticipations of what would happen

when she began upon the evening's harvest of souls.

But it was something else that happened. At a signal from Sister Soulsby

the steward got up, and, in an unconcerned sort of way, went through the

throng to the rear of the church, locked the doors, and put the keys

in their pockets. The sister dryly explained now to the surprised

congregation that there was a season for all things, and that on the

present occasion they would suspend the glorious work of redeeming

fallen human nature, and take up instead the equally noble task of

raising some fifteen hundred dollars which the church needed in its

business. The doors would only be opened again when this had been

accomplished.

The brethren were much taken aback by this trick, and they permitted

themselves to exchange a good many scowling and indignant glances, the

while their professional visitors sang another of their delightfully

novel sacred duets. Its charm of harmony for once fell upon

unsympathetic ears. But then Sister Soulsby began another monologue,

defending this way of collecting money, chaffing the assemblage with

bright-eyed impudence on their having been trapped, and scoring,

one after another, neat and jocose little personal points on local

characteristics, at which everybody but the individual touched grinned

broadly. She was so droll and cheeky, and withal effective in her talk,

that she quite won the crowd over. She told a story about a woodchuck

which fairly brought down the house.

“A man,” she began, with a quizzical twinkle in her eye, “told me once

about hunting a woodchuck with a pack of dogs, and they chased it so

hard that it finally escaped only by climbing a butternut-tree. 'But, my

friend,' I said to him, 'woodchucks can't climb trees--butternut-trees

or any other kind--and you know it!' All he said in reply to me was:

'This woodchuck had to climb a tree!' And that's the way with this

congregation. You think you can't raise $1,500, but you've GOT to.”

So it went on. She set them all laughing; and then, with a twist of the

eyes and a change of voice, lo, and behold, she had them nearly crying

in the same breath. Under the pressure of these jumbled emotions,

brethren began to rise up in their pews and say what they would give.

The wonderful woman had something smart and apt to say about each fresh

contribution, and used it to screw up the general interest a notch

further toward benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes and impromptu

exhortations and prayers she kept the thing whirling, until a sort of

duel of generosity began between two of the most unlikely men--Erastus

Winch and Levi Gorringe. Everybody had been surprised when Winch gave

his first $50; but when he rose again, half an hour afterward, and said

that, owing to the high public position of some of the new members on

probation, he foresaw a great future for the church, and so felt moved

to give another $25, there was general amazement. Moved by a common

instinct, all eyes were turned upon Levi Gorringe, and he, without the

slightest hesitation, stood up and said he would give $100. There was

something in his tone which must have annoyed Brother Winch, for he shot

up like a dart, and called out, “Put me down for fifty more;” and that

brought Gorringe to his feet with an added $50, and then the two went

on raising each other till the assemblage was agape with admiring

stupefaction.

This gladiatorial combat might have been going on till now, the

Sunday-school superintendent concluded, if Winch hadn't subsided. The

amount of the contributions hadn't been figured up yet, for Sister

Soulsby kept the list; but there had been a tremendous lot of money

raised. Of that there could be no doubt.

The Presiding Elder now told Theron that the Quarterly Conference had

been adjourned yesterday till today. He and Brother Davis were even now

on their way to attend the session in the church next door. The Elder

added, with an obvious kindly significance, that though Theron was too

ill to attend it, he guessed his absence would do him no harm. Then the

two men left the room, and Theron went to sleep again.

Another almost blank period ensued, this time lasting for forty-eight

hours. The young minister was enfolded in the coils of a fever of some

sort, which Brother Soulsby, who had dabbled considerably in medicine,

admitted that he was puzzled about. Sometimes he thought that it was

typhoid, and then again there were symptoms which looked suspiciously

like brain fever. The Methodists of Octavius counted no physician among

their numbers, and when, on the second day, Alice grew scared, and

decided, with Brother Soulsby's assent, to call in professional advice,

the only doctor's name she could recall was that of Ledsmar. She was

conscious of an instinctive dislike for the vague image of him her fancy

had conjured up, but the reflection that he was Theron's friend, and so

probably would be more moderate in his charges, decided her.

Brother Soulsby showed a most comforting tact and swiftness of

apprehension when Alice, in mentioning Dr. Ledsmar's name, disclosed by

her manner a fear that his being sent for would create talk among the

church people. He volunteered at once to act as messenger himself, and,

with no better guide than her dim hints at direction, found the doctor

and brought him back to the parsonage.

Dr. Ledsmar expressly disclaimed to Soulsby all pretence of professional

skill, and made him understand that he went along solely because

he liked Mr. Ware, and was interested in him, and in any case would

probably be of as much use as the wisest of strange physicians--a view

which the little revivalist received with comprehending nods of tacit

acquiescence. Ledsmar came, and was taken up to the sick-room. He sat

on the bedside and talked with Theron awhile, and then went downstairs

again. To Alice's anxious inquiries, he replied that it seemed to him

merely a case of over-work and over-worry, about which there was not the

slightest occasion for alarm.

“But he says the strangest things,” the wife put in. “He has been quite

delirious at times.”

“That means only that his brain is taking a rest as well as his body,”

remarked Ledsmar. “That is Nature's way of securing an equilibrium of

repose--of recuperation. He will come out of it with his mind all the

fresher and clearer.”

“I don't believe he knows shucks!” was Alice's comment when she closed

the street door upon Dr. Ledsmar. “Anybody could have come in and looked

at a sick man and said, 'Leave him alone.' You expect something more

from a doctor. It's his business to say what to do. And I suppose he'll

charge two dollars for just telling me that my husband was resting!”

“No,” said Brother Soulsby, “he said he never practised, and that he

would come only as a friend.”

“Well, it isn't my idea of a friend--not to prescribe a single thing,”

protested Alice.

Yet it seemed that no prescription was needed, after all. The next

morning Theron woke to find himself feeling quite restored in spirits

and nerves. He sat up in bed, and after an instant of weakly giddiness,

recognized that he was all right again. Greatly pleased, he got up,

and proceeded to dress himself. There were little recurring hints of

faintness and vertigo, while he was shaving, but he had the sense

to refer these to the fact that he was very, very hungry. He went

downstairs, and smiled with the pleased pride of a child at the surprise

which his appearance at the door created. Alice and the Soulsbys were

at breakfast. He joined them, and ate voraciously, declaring that it was

worth a month's illness to have things taste so good once more.

“You still look white as a sheet,” said Alice, warningly. “If I were

you, I'd be careful in my diet for a spell yet.”

For answer, Theron let Sister Soulsby help him again to ham and eggs.

He talked exclusively to Sister Soulsby, or rather invited her by

his manner to talk to him, and listened and watched her with indolent

content. There was a sort of happy and purified languor in his physical

and mental being, which needed and appreciated just this--to sit next a

bright and attractive woman at a good breakfast, and be ministered to by

her sprightly conversation, by the flash of her informing and inspiring

eyes, and the nameless sense of support and repose which her near

proximity exhaled. He felt himself figuratively leaning against Sister

Soulsby's buoyant personality, and resting.

Brother Soulsby, like the intelligent creature he was, ate his breakfast

in peace; but Alice would interpose remarks from time to time. Theron

was conscious of a certain annoyance at this, and knew that he was

showing it by an exaggerated display of interest in everything Sister

Soulsby said, and persisted in it. There trembled in the background of

his thoughts ever and again the recollection of a grievance against

his wife--an offence which she had committed--but he put it aside as

something to be grappled and dealt with when he felt again like taking

up the serious and disagreeable things of life. For the moment, he

desired only to be amused by Sister Soulsby. Her casual mention of the

fact that she and her husband were taking their departure that very day,

appealed to him as an added reason for devoting his entire attention to

her.

“You mustn't forget that famous talking-to you threatened me with--that

'regular hoeing-over,' you know,” he reminded her, when he found

himself alone with her after breakfast. He smiled as he spoke, in frank

enjoyment of the prospect.

Sister Soulsby nodded, and aided with a roll of her eyes the effect of

mock-menace in her uplifted forefinger. “Oh, never fear,” she cried.

“You'll catch it hot and strong. But that'll keep till afternoon.

Tell me, do you feel strong enough to go in next door and attend the

trustees' meeting this forenoon? It's rather important that you should

be there, if you can spur yourself up to it. By the way, you haven't

asked what happened at the Quarterly Conference yesterday.”

Theron sighed, and made a little grimace of repugnance. “If you knew how

little I cared!” he said. “I did hope you'd forget all about mentioning

that--and everything else connected with--the next door. You talk so

much more interestingly about other things.”

“Here's gratitude for you!” exclaimed Sister Soulsby, with a gay

simulation of despair. “Why, man alive, do you know what I've done for

you? I got around on the Presiding Elder's blind side, I captured old

Pierce, I wound Winch right around my little finger, I worked two or

three of the class-leaders--all on your account. The result was you

went through as if you'd had your ears pinned back, and been greased all

over. You've got an extra hundred dollars added to your salary; do you

hear? On the sixth question of the order of business the Elder ruled

that the recommendation of the last conference's estimating committee

could be revised (between ourselves he was wrong, but that doesn't

matter), and so you're in clover. And very friendly things were said

about you, too.”

“It was very kind of you,” said Theron. “I am really extremely grateful

to you.” He shook her by the hand to make up for what he realized to be

a lack of fervor in his tones.

“Well, then,” Sister Soulsby replied, “you pull yourself together, and

take your place as chairman of the trustees' meeting, and see to it

that, whatever comes up, you side with old Pierce and Winch.”

“Oh, THEY'RE my friends now, are they?” asked Theron, with a faint play

of irony about his lips.

“Yes, that's your ticket this election,” she answered briskly, “and mind

you vote it straight. Don't bother about reasons now. Just take it from

me, as the song says, 'that things have changed since Willie died.'

That's all. And then come back here, and this afternoon we'll have a

good old-fashioned jaw.”

The Rev. Mr. Ware, walking with ostentatious feebleness, and forcing

a conventional smile upon his wan face, duly made his unexpected

appearance at the trustees' meeting in one of the smaller classrooms. He

received their congratulations gravely, and shook hands with all three.

It required an effort to do this impartially, because, upon sight of

Levi Gorringe, there rose up suddenly within him an emotion of fierce

dislike and enmity. In some enigmatic way his thoughts had kept

themselves away from Gorringe ever since Sunday evening. Now they

concentrated with furious energy and swiftness upon him. Theron

seemed able in a flash of time to coordinate many recollections of

Gorringe--the early liking Alice had professed for him, the mystery of

those purchased plants in her garden, the story of the girl he had lost

in church, his offer to lend him money, the way in which he had sat

beside Alice at the love-feast and followed her to the altar-rail in

the evening. These raced abreast through the young minister's brain, yet

with each its own image, and its relation to the others clearly defined.

He found the nerve, all the same, to take this third trustee by the

hand, and to thank him for his congratulations, and even to say, with a

surface smile of welcome, “It is BROTHER Gorringe, now, I remember.”

The work before the meeting was chiefly of a routine kind. In most

places this would have been transacted by the stewards; but in Octavius

these minor officials had degenerated into mere ceremonial abstractions,

who humbly ratified, or by arrangement anticipated, the will of the

powerful, mortgage-owning trustees. Theron sat languidly at the head

of the table while these common-place matters passed in their course,

noting the intonations of Gorringe's voice as he read from his

secretary's book, and finding his ear displeased by them. No issue arose

upon any of these trivial affairs, and the minister, feeling faint

and weary in the heat, wondered why Sister Soulsby had insisted on his

coming.

All at once he sat up straight, with an instinctive warning in his

mind that here was the thing. Gorringe had taken up the subject of the

“debt-raising” evening, and read out its essentials as they had been

embodied in a report of the stewards. The gross sum obtained, in cash

and promises, was $1,860. The stewards had collected of this a trifle

less than half, but hoped to get it all in during the ensuing quarter.

There were, also, the bill of Mr. and Mrs. Soulsby for $150, and the

increases of $100 in the pastor's salary and $25 in the apportioned

contribution of the charge toward the Presiding Elder's maintenance, the

two latter items of which the Quarterly Conference had sanctioned.

“I want to hear the names of the subscribers and their amounts read

out,” put in Brother Pierce.

When this was done, it became apparent that much more than half of the

entire amount had been offered by two men. Levi Gorringe's $450 and

Erastus Winch's $425 left only $985 to be divided up among some seventy

or eighty other members of the congregation.

Brother Pierce speedily stopped the reading of these subordinate names.

“They're of no concern whatever,” he said, despite the fact that his

own might have been reached in time. “Those first names are what I was

getting at. Have those two first amounts, the big ones, be'n paid?”

“One has--the other not,” replied Gorringe.

“PRE-cisely,” remarked the senior trustee. “And I'm goin' to move that

it needn't be paid, either. When Brother Winch, here, began hollerin'

out those extra twenty-fives and fifties, that evening, it was under a

complete misapprehension. He'd be'n on the Cheese Board that same Monday

afternoon, and he'd done what he thought was a mighty big stroke of

business, and he felt liberal according. I know just what that feelin'

is myself. If I'd be'n makin' a mint o' money, instead o' losin' all the

while, as I do, I'd 'a' done just the same. But the next day, lo, and

behold, Brother Winch found that it was all a mistake--he hadn't made a

single penny.”

“Fact is, I lost by the whole transaction,” put in Erastus Winch,

defiantly.

“Just so,” Brother Pierce went on. “He lost money. You have his own word

for it. Well, then, I say it would be a burning shame for us to consent

to touch one penny of what he offered to give, in the fullness of his

heart, while he was laborin' under that delusion. And I move he be not

asked for it. We've got quite as much as we need, without it. I put my

motion.”

“That is, YOU don't put it,” suggested Winch, correctingly. “You move

it, and Brother Ware, whom we're all so glad to see able to come and

preside--he'll put it.”

There was a moment's silence. “You've heard the motion,” said Theron,

tentatively, and then paused for possible remarks. He was not going to

meddle in this thing himself, and Gorringe was the only other who might

have an opinion to offer. The necessities of the situation forced him

to glance at the lawyer inquiringly. He did so, and turned his eyes away

again like a shot. Gorringe was looking him squarely in the face, and

the look was freighted with satirical contempt.

The young minister spoke between clinched teeth. “All those in favor

will say aye.”

Brothers Pierce and Winch put up a simultaneous and confident “Aye.”

“No, you don't!” interposed the lawyer, with deliberate, sneering

emphasis. “I decidedly protest against Winch's voting. He's directly

interested, and he mustn't vote. Your chairman knows that perfectly

well.”

“Yes, I think Brother Winch ought not to vote,” decided Theron, with

great calmness. He saw now what was coming, and underneath his surface

composure there were sharp flutterings.

“Very well, then,” said Gorringe. “I vote no, and it's a tie. It rests

with the chairman now to cast the deciding vote, and say whether this

interesting arrangement shall go through or not.”

“Me?” said Theron, eying the lawyer with a cool self-control which had

come all at once to him. “Me? Oh, I vote Aye.”

CHAPTER XVII

“Well, I did what you told me to do,” Theron Ware remarked to Sister

Soulsby, when at last they found themselves alone in the sitting-room

after the midday meal.

It had taken not a little strategic skirmishing to secure the room to

themselves for the hospitable Alice, much touched by the thought of her

new friend's departure that very evening had gladly proposed to let all

the work stand over until night, and devote herself entirely to Sister

Soulsby. When, finally, Brother Soulsby conceived and deftly executed

the coup of interesting her in the budding of roses, and then leading

her off into the garden to see with her own eyes how it was done, Theron

had a sense of being left alone with a conspirator. The notion impelled

him to plunge at once into the heart of their mystery.

“I did what you told me to do,” he repeated, looking up from his low

easy-chair to where she sat by the desk; “and I dare say you won't be

surprised when I add that I have no respect for myself for doing it.”

“And yet you would go and do it right over again, eh?” the woman

said, in bright, pert tones, nodding her head, and smiling at him with

roguish, comprehending eyes. “Yes, that's the way we're built. We spend

our lives doing that sort of thing.”

“I don't know that you would precisely grasp my meaning,” said the young

minister, with a polite effort in his words to mask the untoward side of

the suggestion. “It is a matter of conscience with me; and I am pained

and shocked at myself.”

Sister Soulsby drummed for an absent moment with her thin, nervous

fingers on the desk-top. “I guess maybe you'd better go and lie down

again,” she said gently. “You're a sick man, still, and it's no good

your worrying your head just now with things of this sort. You'll see

them differently when you're quite yourself again.”

“No, no,” pleaded Theron. “Do let us have our talk out! I'm all right.

My mind is clear as a bell. Truly, I've really counted on this talk with

you.”

“But there's something else to talk about, isn't there, besides--besides

your conscience?” she asked. Her eyes bent upon him a kindly pressure as

she spoke, which took all possible harshness from her meaning.

Theron answered the glance rather than her words. “I know that you are

my friend,” he said simply.

Sister Soulsby straightened herself, and looked down upon him with a new

intentness. “Well, then,” she began, “let's thrash this thing out right

now, and be done with it. You say it's hurt your conscience to do

just one little hundredth part of what there was to be done here. Ask

yourself what you mean by that. Mind, I'm not quarrelling, and I'm not

thinking about anything except just your own state of mind. You think

you soiled your hands by doing what you did. That is to say, you wanted

ALL the dirty work done by other people. That's it, isn't it?”

“The Rev. Mr. Ware sat up, in turn, and looked doubtingly into his

companion's face.

“Oh, we were going to be frank, you know,” she added, with a pleasant

play of mingled mirth and honest liking in her eyes.

“No,” he said, picking his words, “my point would rather be that--that

there ought not to have been any of what you yourself call this--this

'dirty work.' THAT is my feeling.”

“Now we're getting at it,” said Sister Soulsby, briskly. “My dear

friend, you might just as well say that potatoes are unclean and unfit

to eat because manure is put into the ground they grow in. Just look at

the case. Your church here was running behind every year. Your people

had got into a habit of putting in nickels instead of dimes, and letting

you sweat for the difference. That's a habit, like tobacco, or biting

your fingernails, or anything else. Either you were all to come to smash

here, or the people had to be shaken up, stood on their heads, broken

of their habit. It's my business--mine and Soulsby's--to do that sort

of thing. We came here and we did it--did it up brown, too. We not

only raised all the money the church needs, and to spare, but I took a

personal shine to you, and went out of my way to fix up things for

you. It isn't only the extra hundred dollars, but the whole tone of

the congregation is changed toward you now. You'll see that they'll be

asking to have you back here, next spring. And you're solid with your

Presiding Elder, too. Well, now, tell me straight--is that worth while,

or not?”

“I've told you that I am very grateful,” answered the minister, “and I

say it again, and I shall never be tired of repeating it. But--but it

was the means I had in mind.”

“Quite so,” rejoined the sister, patiently. “If you saw the way a hotel

dinner was cooked, you wouldn't be able to stomach it. Did you ever see

a play? In a theatre, I mean. I supposed not. But you'll understand when

I say that the performance looks one way from where the audience sit,

and quite a different way when you are behind the scenes. THERE you see

that the trees and houses are cloth, and the moon is tissue paper,

and the flying fairy is a middle-aged woman strung up on a rope.

That doesn't prove that the play, out in front, isn't beautiful and

affecting, and all that. It only shows that everything in this world is

produced by machinery--by organization. The trouble is that you've

been let in on the stage, behind the scenes, so to speak, and you're so

green--if you'll pardon me--that you want to sit down and cry because

the trees ARE cloth, and the moon IS a lantern. And I say, don't be such

a goose!”

“I see what you mean,” Theron said, with an answering smile. He added,

more gravely, “All the same, the Winch business seems to me--”

“Now the Winch business is my own affair,” Sister Soulsby broke in

abruptly. “I take all the responsibility for that. You need know nothing

about it. You simply voted as you did on the merits of the case as he

presented them--that's all.”

“But--” Theron began, and then paused. Something had occurred to him,

and he knitted his brows to follow its course of expansion in his mind.

Suddenly he raised his head. “Then you arranged with Winch to make those

bogus offers--just to lead others on?” he demanded.

Sister Soulsby's large eyes beamed down upon him in reply, at first in

open merriment, then more soberly, till their regard was almost pensive.

“Let us talk of something else,” she said. “All that is past and gone.

It has nothing to do with you, anyway. I've got some advice to give you

about keeping up this grip you've got on your people.”

The young minister had risen to his feet while she spoke. He put his

hands in his pockets, and with rounded shoulders began slowly pacing the

room. After a turn or two he came to the desk, and leaned against it.

“I doubt if it's worth while going into that,” he said, in the solemn

tone of one who feels that an irrevocable thing is being uttered. She

waited to hear more, apparently. “I think I shall go away--give up the

ministry,” he added.

Sister Soulsby's eyes revealed no such shock of consternation as he,

unconsciously, had looked for. They remained quite calm; and when she

spoke, they deepened, to fit her speech, with what he read to be a

gaze of affectionate melancholy--one might say pity. She shook her head

slowly.

“No--don't let any one else hear you say that,” she replied. “My poor

young friend, it's no good to even think it. The real wisdom is to

school yourself to move along smoothly, and not fret, and get the best

of what's going. I've known others who felt as you do--of course there

are times when every young man of brains and high notions feels that

way--but there's no help for it. Those who tried to get out only broke

themselves. Those who stayed in, and made the best of it--well, one of

them will be a bishop in another ten years.”

Theron had started walking again. “But the moral degradation of it!”

he snapped out at her over his shoulder. “I'd rather earn the meanest

living, at an honest trade, and be free from it.”

“That may all be,” responded Sister Soulsby. “But it isn't a question of

what you'd rather do. It's what you can do. How could you earn a living?

What trade or business do you suppose you could take up now, and get a

living out of? Not one, my man, not one.”

Theron stopped and stared at her. This view of his capabilities came

upon him with the force and effect of a blow.

“I don't discover, myself,” he began stumblingly, “that I'm so

conspicuously inferior to the men I see about me who do make livings,

and very good ones, too.”

“Of course you're not,” she replied with easy promptness; “you're

greatly the other way, or I shouldn't be taking this trouble with you.

But you're what you are because you're where you are. The moment you try

on being somewhere else, you're done for. In all this world nobody else

comes to such unmerciful and universal grief as the unfrocked priest.”

The phrase sent Theron's fancy roving. “I know a Catholic priest,” he

said irrelevantly, “who doesn't believe an atom in--in things.”

“Very likely,” said Sister Soulsby. “Most of us do. But you don't hear

him talking about going and earning his living, I'll bet! Or if he

does, he takes powerful good care not to go, all the same. They've got

horse-sense, those priests. They're artists, too. They know how to allow

for the machinery behind the scenes.”

“But it's all so different,” urged the young minister; “the same things

are not expected of them. Now I sat the other night and watched those

people you got up around the altar-rail, groaning and shouting and

crying, and the others jumping up and down with excitement, and Sister

Lovejoy--did you see her?--coming out of her pew and regularly waltzing

in the aisle, with her eyes shut, like a whirling dervish--I positively

believe it was all that made me ill. I couldn't stand it. I can't stand

it now. I won't go back to it! Nothing shall make me!”

“Oh-h, yes, you will,” she rejoined soothingly. “There's nothing else to

do. Just put a good face on it, and make up your mind to get through by

treading on as few corns as possible, and keeping your own toes well in,

and you'll be surprised how easy it'll all come to be. You were

speaking of the revival business. Now that exemplifies just what I was

saying--it's a part of our machinery. Now a church is like everything

else,--it's got to have a boss, a head, an authority of some sort, that

people will listen to and mind. The Catholics are different, as you say.

Their church is chuck-full of authority--all the way from the Pope

down to the priest--and accordingly they do as they're told. But the

Protestants--your Methodists most of all--they say 'No, we won't have

any authority, we won't obey any boss.' Very well, what happens? We

who are responsible for running the thing, and raising the money and

so on--we have to put on a spurt every once in a while, and work up a

general state of excitement; and while it's going, don't you see that

THAT is the authority, the motive power, whatever you like to call it,

by which things are done? Other denominations don't need it. We do, and

that's why we've got it.”

“But the mean dishonesty of it all!” Theron broke forth. He moved about

again, his bowed face drawn as with bodily suffering. “The low-born

tricks, the hypocrisies! I feel as if I could never so much as look at

these people here again without disgust.”

“Oh, now that's where you make your mistake,” Sister Soulsby put in

placidly. “These people of yours are not a whit worse than other people.

They've got their good streaks and their bad streaks, just like the rest

of us. Take them by and large, they're quite on a par with other folks

the whole country through.”

“I don't believe there's another congregation in the Conference

where--where this sort of thing would have been needed, or, I might say,

tolerated,” insisted Theron.

“Perhaps you're right,” the other assented; “but that only shows that

your people here are different from the others--not that they're worse.

You don't seem to realize: Octavius, so far as the Methodists are

concerned, is twenty or thirty years behind the times. Now that has its

advantages and its disadvantages. The church here is tough and coarse,

and full of grit, like a grindstone; and it does ministers from other

more niminy-piminy places all sorts of good to come here once in a while

and rub themselves up against it. It scours the rust and mildew off from

their piety, and they go back singing and shouting. But of course

it's had a different effect with you. You're razor-steel instead of

scythe-steel, and the grinding's been too rough and violent for you.

But you see what I mean. These people here really take their primitive

Methodism seriously. To them the profession of entire sanctification is

truly a genuine thing. Well, don't you see, when people just know that

they're saved, it doesn't seem to them to matter so much what they

do. They feel that ordinary rules may well be bent and twisted in the

interest of people so supernaturally good as they are. That's pure human

nature. It's always been like that.”

Theron paused in his walk to look absently at her. “That thought,”

he said, in a vague, slow way, “seems to be springing up in my path,

whichever way I turn. It oppresses me, and yet it fascinates me--this

idea that the dead men have known more than we know, done more than we

do; that there is nothing new anywhere; that--”

“Never mind the dead men,” interposed Sister Soulsby. “Just you come

and sit down here. I hate to have you straddling about the room when I'm

trying to talk to you.”

Theron obeyed, and as he sank into the low seat, Sister Soulsby drew up

her chair, and put her hand on his shoulder. Her gaze rested upon his

with impressive steadiness.

“And now I want to talk seriously to you, as a friend,” she began. “You

mustn't breathe to any living soul the shadow of a hint of this nonsense

about leaving the ministry. I could see how you were feeling--I saw the

book you were reading the first time I entered this room--and that made

me like you; only I expected to find you mixing up more worldly gumption

with your Renan. Well, perhaps I like you all the better for not having

it--for being so delightfully fresh. At any rate, that made me sail in

and straighten your affairs for you. And now, for God's sake, keep them

straight. Just put all notions of anything else out of your head. Watch

your chief men and women, and be friends with them. Keep your eye open

for what they think you ought to do, and do it. Have your own ideas as

much as you like, read what you like, say 'Damn' under your breath as

much as you like, but don't let go of your job. I've knocked about

too much, and I've seen too many promising young fellows cut their own

throats for pure moonshine, not to have a right to say that.”

Theron could not be insensible to the friendly hand on his shoulder, or

to the strenuous sincerity of the voice which thus adjured him.

“Well,” he said vaguely, smiling up into her earnest eyes, “if we agree

that it IS moonshine.”

“See here!” she exclaimed, with renewed animation, patting his shoulder

in a brisk, automatic way, to point the beginnings of her confidences:

“I'll tell you something. It's about myself. I've got a religion of my

own, and it's got just one plank in it, and that is that the time to

separate the sheep from the goats is on Judgment Day, and that it can't

be done a minute before.”

The young minister took in the thought, and turned it about in his mind,

and smiled upon it.

“And that brings me to what I'm going to tell you,” Sister Soulsby

continued. She leaned back in her chair, and crossed her knees so

that one well-shaped and artistically shod foot poised itself close to

Theron's hand. Her eyes dwelt upon his face with an engaging candor.

“I began life,” she said, “as a girl by running away from a stupid home

with a man that I knew was married already. After that, I supported

myself for a good many years--generally, at first, on the stage. I've

been a front-ranker in Amazon ballets, and I've been leading lady in

comic opera companies out West. I've told fortunes in one room of a

mining-camp hotel where the biggest game of faro in the Territory went

on in another. I've been a professional clairvoyant, and I've been a

professional medium, and I've been within one vote of being indicted

by a grand jury, and the money that bought that vote was put up by the

smartest and most famous train-gambler between Omaha and 'Frisco, a

gentleman who died in his boots and took three sheriff's deputies along

with him to Kingdom-Come. Now, that's MY record.”

Theron looked earnestly at her, and said nothing.

“And now take Soulsby,” she went on. “Of course I take it for granted

there's a good deal that he has never felt called upon to mention. He

hasn't what you may call a talkative temperament. But there is also a

good deal that I do know. He's been an actor, too, and to this day I'd

back him against Edwin Booth himself to recite 'Clarence's Dream.' And

he's been a medium, and then he was a travelling phrenologist, and for

a long time he was advance agent for a British Blondes show, and when I

first saw him he was lecturing on female diseases--and he had HIS little

turn with a grand jury too. In fact, he was what you may call a regular

bad old rooster.”

Again Theron suffered the pause to lapse without comment--save for an

amorphous sort of conversation which he felt to be going on between his

eyes and those of Sister Soulsby.

“Well, then,” she resumed, “so much for us apart. Now about us together.

We liked each other from the start. We compared notes, and we found that

we had both soured on living by fakes, and that we were tired of the

road, and wanted to settle down and be respectable in our old age. We

had a little money--enough to see us through a year or two. Soulsby had

always hungered and longed to own a garden and raise flowers, and had

never been able to stay long enough in one place to see so much as a

bean-pod ripen. So we took a little place in a quiet country village

down on the Southern Tier, and he planted everything three deep all over

the place, and I bought a roomful of cheap good books, and we started

in. We took to it like ducks to water for a while, and I don't say that

we couldn't have stood it out, just doing nothing, to this very day; but

as luck would have it, during the first winter there was a revival at

the local Methodist church, and we went every evening--at first just to

kill time, and then because we found we liked the noise and excitement

and general racket of the thing. After it was all over each of us found

that the other had been mighty near going up to the rail and joining the

mourners. And another thing had occurred to each of us, too--that is,

what tremendous improvements there were possible in the way that amateur

revivalist worked up his business. This stuck in our crops, and we

figured on it all through the winter.--Well, to make a long story short,

we finally went into the thing ourselves.”

“Tell me one thing,” interposed Theron. “I'm anxious to understand

it all as we go along. Were you and he at any time sincerely

converted?--that is, I mean, genuinely convicted of sin and conscious

of--you know what I mean!”

“Oh, bless you, yes,” responded Sister Soulsby. “Not only once--dozens

of times--I may say every time. We couldn't do good work if we weren't.

But that's a matter of temperament--of emotions.”

“Precisely. That was what I was getting at,” explained Theron.

“Well, then, hear what I was getting at,” she went on. “You were talking

very loudly here about frauds and hypocrisies and so on, a few minutes

ago. Now I say that Soulsby and I do good, and that we're good fellows.

Now take him, for example. There isn't a better citizen in all

Chemung County than he is, or a kindlier neighbor, or a better or more

charitable man. I've known him to stay up a whole winter's night in

a poor Irishman's stinking and freezing stable, trying to save his

cart-horse for him, that had been seized with some sort of fit. The

man's whole livelihood, and his family's, was in that horse; and when it

died, Soulsby bought him another, and never told even ME about it. Now

that I call real piety, if you like.”

“So do I,” put in Theron, cordially.

“And this question of fraud,” pursued his companion,--“look at it in

this light. You heard us sing. Well, now, I was a singer, of course, but

Soulsby hardly knew one note from another. I taught him to sing, and he

went at it patiently and diligently, like a little man. And I invented

that scheme of finding tunes which the crowd didn't know, and so

couldn't break in on and smother. I simply took Chopin--he is full of

sixths, you know--and I got all sorts of melodies out of his waltzes

and mazurkas and nocturnes and so on, and I trained Soulsby just to sing

those sixths so as to make the harmony, and there you are. He couldn't

sing by himself any more than a crow, but he's got those sixths of his

down to a hair. Now that's machinery, management, organization. We take

these tunes, written by a devil-may-care Pole who was living with George

Sand openly at the time, and pass 'em off on the brethren for hymns.

It's a fraud, yes; but it's a good fraud. So they are all good frauds.

I say frankly that I'm glad that the change and the chance came to help

Soulsby and me to be good frauds.”

“And the point is that I'm to be a good fraud, too,” commented the young

minister.

She had risen, and he got to his feet as well. He instinctively sought

for her hand, and pressed it warmly, and held it in both his, with an

exuberance of gratitude and liking in his manner.

Sister Soulsby danced her eyes at him with a saucy little shake of the

head. “I'm afraid you'll never make a really GOOD fraud,” she said. “You

haven't got it in you. Your intentions are all right, but your execution

is hopelessly clumsy. I came up to your bedroom there twice while you

were sick, just to say 'howdy,' and you kept your eyes shut, and all the

while a blind horse could have told that you were wide awake.”

“I must have thought it was my wife,” said Theron.

PART III

CHAPTER XVIII

When the lingering dusk finally settled down upon this long summer

evening, the train bearing the Soulsbys homeward was already some score

of miles on its way, and the Methodists of Octavius had nearly finished

their weekly prayer-meeting.

After the stirring events of the revival, it was only to be expected

that this routine, home-made affair should suffer from a reaction. The

attendance was larger than usual, perhaps, but the proceedings were

spiritless and tame. Neither the pastor nor his wife was present at

the beginning, and the class-leader upon whom control devolved made but

feeble headway against the spell of inertia which the hot night-air

laid upon the gathering. Long pauses intervened between the perfunctory

praise-offerings and supplications, and the hymns weariedly raised from

time to time fell again in languor by the wayside.

Alice came in just as people were beginning to hope that some one

would start the Doxology, and bring matters to a close. Her appearance

apparently suggested this to the class-leader, for in a few moments the

meeting had been dismissed, and some of the members, on their way out,

were shaking hands with their minister's wife, and expressing the polite

hope that he was better. The worried look in her face, and the obvious

stains of recent tears upon her cheeks imparted an added point and

fervor to these inquiries, but she replied to all in tones of

studied tranquillity that, although not feeling well enough to attend

prayer-meeting, Brother Ware was steadily recovering strength, and

confidently expected to be in complete health by Sunday. They left her,

and could hardly wait to get into the vestibule to ask one another in

whispers what on earth she could have been crying about.

Meanwhile Brother Ware improved his convalescent state by pacing slowly

up and down under the elms on the side of the street opposite the

Catholic church. There were no houses here for a block and more; the

sidewalk was broken in many places, so that passers-by avoided it; the

overhanging boughs shrouded it all in obscurity; it was preeminently a

place to be alone in.

Theron had driven to the depot with his guests an hour before, and after

a period of pleasant waiting on the platform, had said good-bye to

them as the train moved away. Then he turned to Alice, who had also

accompanied them in the carriage, and was conscious of a certain

annoyance at her having come. That long familiar talk of the afternoon

had given him the feeling that he was entitled to bid farewell to Sister

Soulsby--to both the Soulsbys--by himself.

“I am afraid folks will think it strange--neither of us attending the

prayer-meeting,” he said, with a suggestion of reproof in his tone, as

they left the station-yard.

“If we get back in time, I'll run in for a minute,” answered Alice, with

docility.

“No--no,” he broke in. “I'm not equal to walking so fast. You run on

ahead, and explain matters, and I will come along slowly.”

“The hack we came in is still there in the yard,” the wife suggested.

“We could drive home in that. I don't believe it would cost more than a

quarter--and if you're feeling badly--”

“But I am NOT feeling badly,” Theron replied, with frank impatience.

“Only I feel--I feel that being alone with my thoughts would be good for

me.”

“Oh, certainly--by all means!” Alice had said, and turned sharply on her

heel.

Being alone with these thoughts, Theron strolled aimlessly about, and

did not think at all. The shadows gathered, and fireflies began to

disclose their tiny gleams among the shrubbery in the gardens.

A lamp-lighter came along, and passed him, leaving in his wake a

straggling double line of lights, glowing radiantly against the

black-green of the trees. This recalled to Theron that he had heard that

the town council lit the street lamps by the almanac, and economized gas

when moonshine was due. The idea struck him as droll, and he dwelt

upon it in various aspects, smiling at some of its comic possibilities.

Looking up in the middle of one of these whimsical conceits, the

sportive impulse died suddenly within him. He realized that it was dark,

and that the massive black bulk reared against the sky on the other side

of the road was the Catholic church. The other fact, that he had been

there walking to and fro for some time, was borne in upon him more

slowly. He turned, and resumed the pacing up and down with a still more

leisurely step, musing upon the curious way in which people's minds all

unconsciously follow about where instincts and intuitions lead.

No doubt it was what Sister Soulsby had said about Catholics which had

insensibly guided his purposeless stroll in this direction. What a

woman that was! Somehow the purport of her talk--striking, and even

astonishing as he had found it--did not stand out so clearly in his

memory as did the image of the woman herself. She must have

been extremely pretty once. For that matter she still was a most

attractive-looking woman. It had been a genuine pleasure to have her in

the house--to see her intelligent responsive face at the table--to have

it in one's power to make drafts at will upon the fund of sympathy and

appreciation, of facile mirth and ready tenderness in those big eyes of

hers. He liked that phrase she had used about herself--“a good fellow.”

It seemed to fit her to a “t.” And Soulsby was a good fellow too. All at

once it occurred to him to wonder whether they were married or not.

But really that was no affair of his, he reflected. A citizen of the

intellectual world should be above soiling his thoughts with mean

curiosities of that sort, and he drove the impertinent query down again

under the surface of his mind. He refused to tolerate, as well, sundry

vagrant imaginings which rose to cluster about and literalize the

romance of her youth which Sister Soulsby had so frankly outlined.

He would think upon nothing but her as he knew her,--the kindly,

quick-witted, capable and charming woman who had made such a brilliant

break in the monotony of life at that dull parsonage of his. The

only genuine happiness in life must consist in having bright, smart,

attractive women like that always about.

The lights were visible now in the upper rooms of Father Forbes'

pastorate across the way. Theron paused for a second to consider whether

he wanted to go over and call on the priest. He decided that mentally he

was too fagged and flat for such an undertaking. He needed another sort

of companionship--some restful, soothing human contact, which should

exact nothing from him in return, but just take charge of him,

with soft, wise words and pleasant plays of fancy, and jokes

and--and--something of the general effect created by Sister Soulsby's

eyes. The thought expanded itself, and he saw that he had never realized

before--nay, never dreamt before--what a mighty part the comradeship of

talented, sweet-natured and beautiful women must play in the development

of genius, the achievement of lofty aims, out in the great world of

great men. To know such women--ah, that would never fall to his hapless

lot.

The priest's lamps blinked at him through the trees. He remembered that

priests were supposed to be even further removed from the possibilities

of such contact than he was himself. His memory reverted to that

horribly ugly old woman whom Father Forbes had spoken of as his

housekeeper. Life under the same roof with such a hag must be even worse

than--worse than--

The young minister did not finish the comparison, even in the privacy

of his inner soul. He stood instead staring over at the pastorate, in a

kind of stupor of arrested thought. The figure of a woman passed in view

at the nearest window--a tall figure with pale summer clothes of some

sort, and a broad summer hat--a flitting effect of diaphanous shadow

between him and the light which streamed from the casement.

Theron felt a little shiver run over him, as if the delicate coolness of

the changing night-air had got into his blood. The window was open, and

his strained hearing thought it caught the sound of faint laughter. He

continued to gaze at the place where the vision had appeared, the while

a novel and strange perception unfolded itself upon his mind.

He had come there in the hope of encountering Celia Madden.

Now that he looked this fact in the face, there was nothing remarkable

about it. In truth, it was simplicity itself. He was still a sick man,

weak in body and dejected in spirits. The thought of how unhappy and

unstrung he was came to him now with an insistent pathos that brought

tears to his eyes. He was only obeying the universal law of nature--the

law which prompts the pallid spindling sprout of the potato in the

cellar to strive feebly toward the light.

From where he stood in the darkness he stretched out his hands in the

direction of that open window. The gesture was his confession to the

overhanging boughs, to the soft night-breeze, to the stars above--and

it bore back to him something of the confessional's vague and wistful

solace. He seemed already to have drawn down into his soul a taste

of the refreshment it craved. He sighed deeply, and the hot moisture

smarted again upon his eyelids, but this time not all in grief. With

his tender compassion for himself there mingled now a flutter of buoyant

prescience, of exquisite expectancy.

Fate walked abroad this summer night. The street door of the pastorate

opened, and in the flood of illumination which spread suddenly forth

over the steps and sidewalk, Theron saw again the tall form, with the

indefinitely light-hued flowing garments and the wide straw hat. He

heard a tuneful woman's voice call out “Good-night, Maggie,” and caught

no response save the abrupt closing of the door, which turned everything

black again with a bang. He listened acutely for another instant, and

then with long, noiseless strides made his way down his deserted side of

the street. He moderated his pace as he turned to cross the road at the

corner, and then, still masked by the trees, halted altogether, in a

momentary tumult of apprehension. No--yes--it was all right. The girl

sauntered out from the total darkness into the dim starlight of the open

corner.

“Why, bless me, is that you, Miss Madden?”

Celia seemed to discern readily enough, through the accents of surprise,

the identity of the tall, slim man who addressed her from the shadows.

“Good-evening, Mr. Ware,” she said, with prompt affability. “I'm so glad

to find you out again. We heard you were ill.”

“I have been very ill,” responded Theron, as they shook hands and walked

on together. He added, with a quaver in his voice, “I am still far

from strong. I really ought not to be out at all. But--but the longing

for--for--well, I COULDN'T stay in any longer. Even if it kills me, I

shall be glad I came out tonight.”

“Oh, we won't talk of killing,” said Celia. “I don't believe in

illnesses myself.”

“But you believe in collapses of the nerves,” put in Theron, with gentle

sadness, “in moral and spiritual and mental breakdowns. I remember how I

was touched by the way you told me YOU suffered from them. I had to take

what you said then for granted. I had had no experience of it myself.

But now I know what it is.” He drew a long, pathetic sigh. “Oh, DON'T I

know what it is!” he repeated gloomily.

“Come, my friend, cheer up,” Celia purred at him, in soothing tones. He

felt that there was a deliciously feminine and sisterly intuition in

her speech, and in the helpful, nurse-like way in which she drew his arm

through hers. He leaned upon this support, and was glad of it in every

fibre of his being.

“Do you remember? You promised--that last time I saw you--to play for

me,” he reminded her. They were passing the little covered postern door

at the side and rear of the church as he spoke, and he made a half halt

to point the coincidence.

“Oh, there's no one to blow the organ,” she said, divining his

suggestion. “And I haven't the key--and, besides, the organ is too heavy

and severe for an invalid. It would overwhelm you tonight.”

“Not as you would know how to play it for me,” urged Theron, pensively.

“I feel as if good music to-night would make me well again. I am really

very ill and weak--and unhappy!”

The girl seemed moved by the despairing note in his voice. She invited

him by a sympathetic gesture to lean even more directly on her arm.

“Come home with me, and I'll play Chopin to you,” she said, in

compassionate friendliness. “He is the real medicine for bruised and

wounded nerves. You shall have as much of him as you like.”

The idea thus unexpectedly thrown forth spread itself like some vast and

inexpressibly alluring vista before Theron's imagination. The spice of

adventure in it fascinated his mind as well, but for a shrinking moment

the flesh was weak.

“I'm afraid your people would--would think it strange,” he faltered--and

began also to recall that he had some people of his own who would be

even more amazed.

“Nonsense,” said Celia, in fine, bold confidence, and with a reassuring

pressure on his arm. “I allow none of my people to question what I do.

They never dream of such a preposterous thing. Besides, you will see

none of them. Mrs. Madden is at the seaside, and my father and brother

have their own part of the house. I shan't listen for a minute to your

not coming. Come, I'm your doctor. I'm to make you well again.”

There was further conversation, and Theron more or less knew that he was

bearing a part in it, but his whole mind seemed concentrated, in a

sort of delicious terror, upon the wonderful experience to which every

footstep brought him nearer. His magnetized fancy pictured a great

spacious parlor, such as a mansion like the Maddens' would of course

contain, and there would be a grand piano, and lace curtains, and

paintings in gold frames, and a chandelier, and velvet easy-chairs, and

he would sit in one of these, surrounded by all the luxury of the rich,

while Celia played to him. There would be servants about, he presumed,

and very likely they would recognize him, and of course they would

talk about it to Tom, Dick and Harry afterward. But he said to himself

defiantly that he didn't care.

He withdrew his arm from hers as they came upon the well-lighted main

street. He passed no one who seemed to know him. Presently they came

to the Madden place, and Celia, without waiting for the gravelled walk,

struck obliquely across the lawn. Theron, who had been lagging behind

with a certain circumspection, stepped briskly to her side now. Their

progress over the soft, close-cropped turf in the dark together, with

the scent of lilies and perfumed shrubs heavy on the night air, and

the majestic bulk of the big silent house rising among the trees before

them, gave him a thrilling sense of the glory of individual freedom.

“I feel a new man already,” he declared, as they swung along on the

grass. He breathed a long sigh of content, and drew nearer, so that

their shoulders touched now and again as they walked. In a minute more

they were standing on the doorstep, and Theron heard the significant

jingle of a bunch of keys which his companion was groping for in her

elusive pocket. He was conscious of trembling a little at the sound.

It seemed that, unlike other people, the Maddens did not have their

parlor on the ground-floor, opening off the front hall. Theron stood in

the complete darkness of this hall, till Celia had lit one of several

candles which were in their hand-sticks on a sort of sideboard next the

hat-rack. She beckoned him with a gesture of her head, and he followed

her up a broad staircase, magnificent in its structural appointments

of inlaid woods, and carpeted with what to his feet felt like down. The

tiny light which his guide bore before her half revealed, as they passed

in their ascent, tall lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of

armor and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer wall. Over the

stair-rail lay an open space of such stately dimensions, bounded by

terminal lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle-flicker,

that the young country minister could think of no word but “palatial” to

fit it all.

At the head of the flight, Celia led the way along a wide corridor to

where it ended. Here, stretched from side to side, and suspended from

broad hoops of a copper-like metal, was a thick curtain, of a uniform

color which Theron at first thought was green, and then decided must be

blue. She pushed its heavy folds aside, and unlocked another door. He

passed under the curtain behind her, and closed the door.

The room into which he had made his way was not at all after the fashion

of any parlor he had ever seen. In the obscure light it was difficult

to tell what it resembled. He made out what he took to be a painter's

easel, standing forth independently in the centre of things. There were

rows of books on rude, low shelves. Against one of the two windows was

a big, flat writing-table--or was it a drawing-table?--littered with

papers. Under the other window was a carpenter's bench, with a large

mound of something at one end covered with a white cloth. On a table

behind the easel rose a tall mechanical contrivance, the chief feature

of which was a thick upright spiral screw. The floor was of bare

wood stained brown. The walls of this queer room had photographs and

pictures, taken apparently from illustrated papers, pinned up at random

for their only ornament.

Celia had lighted three or four other candles on the mantel. She

caught the dumfounded expression with which her guest was surveying his

surroundings, and gave a merry little laugh.

“This is my workshop,” she explained. “I keep this for the things I do

badly--things I fool with. If I want to paint, or model in clay, or bind

books, or write, or draw, or turn on the lathe, or do some carpentering,

here's where I do it. All the things that make a mess which has to

be cleaned up--they are kept out here--because this is as far as the

servants are allowed to come.”

She unlocked still another door as she spoke--a door which was also

concealed behind a curtain.

“Now,” she said, holding up the candle so that its reddish flare rounded

with warmth the creamy fulness of her chin and throat, and glowed upon

her hair in a flame of orange light--“now I will show you what is my

very own.”

CHAPTER XIX

Theron Ware looked about him with frankly undisguised astonishment.

The room in which he found himself was so dark at first that it

yielded little to the eye, and that little seemed altogether beyond his

comprehension. His gaze helplessly followed Celia and her candle

about as she busied herself in the work of illumination. When she had

finished, and pinched out the taper, there were seven lights in the

apartment--lights beaming softly through half-opaque alternating

rectangles of blue and yellow glass. They must be set in some sort of

lanterns around against the wall, he thought, but the shape of these he

could hardly make out.

Gradually his sight adapted itself to this subdued light, and he began

to see other things. These queer lamps were placed, apparently, so as to

shed a special radiance upon some statues which stood in the corners of

the chamber, and upon some pictures which were embedded in the walls.

Theron noted that the statues, the marble of which lost its aggressive

whiteness under the tinted lights, were mostly of naked men and women;

the pictures, four or five in number, were all variations of a single

theme--the Virgin Mary and the Child.

A less untutored vision than his would have caught more swiftly the

scheme of color and line in which these works of art bore their share.

The walls of the room were in part of flat upright wooden columns,

terminating high above in simple capitals, and they were all painted in

pale amber and straw and primrose hues, irregularly wavering here and

there toward suggestions of white. Between these pilasters were broader

panels of stamped leather, in gently varying shades of peacock blue.

These contrasted colors vaguely interwove and mingled in what he

could see of the shadowed ceiling far above. They were repeated in the

draperies and huge cushions and pillows of the low, wide divan which ran

about three sides of the room. Even the floor, where it revealed itself

among the scattered rugs, was laid in a mosaic pattern of matched woods,

which, like the rugs, gave back these same shifting blues and uncertain

yellows.

The fourth side of the apartment was broken in outline at one end by the

door through which they had entered, and at the other by a broad, square

opening, hung with looped-back curtains of a thin silken stuff. Between

the two apertures rose against the wall what Theron took at first glance

to be an altar. There were pyramidal rows of tall candles here on either

side, each masked with a little silken hood; below, in the centre, a

shelf-like projection supported what seemed a massive, carved casket,

and in the beautiful intricacies of this, and the receding canopy of

delicate ornamentation which depended above it, the dominant color was

white, deepening away in its shadows, by tenderly minute gradations, to

the tints which ruled the rest of the room.

Celia lighted some of the high, thick tapers in these candelabra, and

opened the top of the casket. Theron saw with surprise that she had

uncovered the keyboard of a piano. He viewed with much greater amazement

her next proceeding--which was to put a cigarette between her lips, and,

bending over one of the candles with it for an instant, turn to him with

a filmy, opalescent veil of smoke above her head.

“Make yourself comfortable anywhere,” she said, with a gesture which

comprehended all the divans and pillows in the place. “Will you smoke?”

“I have never tried since I was a little boy,” said Theron, “but I think

I could. If you don't mind, I should like to see.”

Lounging at his ease on the oriental couch, Theron experimented

cautiously upon the unaccustomed tobacco, and looked at Celia with what

he felt to be the confident quiet of a man of the world. She had thrown

aside her hat, and in doing so had half released some of the heavy

strands of hair coiled at the back of her head. His glance instinctively

rested upon this wonderful hair of hers. There was no mistaking the

sudden fascination its disorder had for his eye.

She stood before him with the cigarette poised daintily between thumb

and finger of a shapely hand, and smiled comprehendingly down on her

guest.

“I suffered the horrors of the damned with this hair of mine when I was

a child,” she said. “I daresay all children have a taste for persecuting

red-heads; but it's a specialty with Irish children. They get hold

somehow of an ancient national superstition, or legend, that red hair

was brought into Ireland by the Danes. It's been a term of reproach with

us since Brian Boru's time to call a child a Dane. I used to be pursued

and baited with it every day of my life, until the one dream of my

ambition was to get old enough to be a Sister of Charity, so that I

might hide my hair under one of their big beastly white linen caps. I've

got rather away from that ideal since, I'm afraid,” she added, with a

droll downward curl of her lip.

“Your hair is very beautiful,” said Theron, in the calm tone of a

connoisseur.

“I like it myself,” Celia admitted, and blew a little smoke-ring toward

him. “I've made this whole room to match it. The colors, I mean,” she

explained, in deference to his uplifted brows. “Between us, we make up

what Whistler would call a symphony. That reminds me--I was going to

play for you. Let me finish the cigarette first.”

Theron felt grateful for her reticence about the fact that he had laid

his own aside. “I have never seen a room at all like this,” he remarked.

“You are right; it does fit you perfectly.”

She nodded her sense of his appreciation. “It is what I like,” she

said. “It expresses ME. I will not have anything about me--or anybody

either--that I don't like. I suppose if an old Greek could see it, it

would make him sick, but it represents what I mean by being a Greek. It

is as near as an Irishman can get to it.”

“I remember your puzzling me by saying that you were a Greek.”

Celia laughed, and tossed the cigarette-end away. “I'd puzzle you more,

I'm afraid, if I tried to explain to you what I really meant by it. I

divide people up into two classes, you know--Greeks and Jews. Once you

get hold of that principle, all other divisions and classifications,

such as by race or language or nationality, seem pure foolishness. It

is the only true division there is. It is just as true among negroes

or wild Indians who never heard of Greece or Jerusalem, as it is among

white folks. That is the beauty of it. It works everywhere, always.”

“Try it on me,” urged Theron, with a twinkling eye. “Which am I?”

“Both,” said the girl, with a merry nod of the head. “But now I'll play.

I told you you were to hear Chopin. I prescribe him for you. He is the

Greekiest of the Greeks. THERE was a nation where all the people were

artists, where everybody was an intellectual aristocrat, where the

Philistine was as unknown, as extinct, as the dodo. Chopin might have

written his music for them.”

“I am interested in Shopang,” put in Theron, suddenly recalling

Sister Soulsby's confidences as to the source of her tunes. “He lived

with--what's his name--George something. We were speaking about him only

this afternoon.”

Celia looked down into her visitor's face at first inquiringly, then

with a latent grin about her lips. “Yes--George something,” she said, in

a tone which mystified him.

The Rev. Mr. Ware was sitting up, a minute afterward, in a ferment of

awakened consciousness that he had never heard the piano played before.

After a little, he noiselessly rearranged the cushions, and settled

himself again in a recumbent posture. It was beyond his strength to

follow that first impulse, and keep his mind abreast with what his ears

took in. He sighed and lay back, and surrendered his senses to the mere

unthinking charm of it all.

It was the Fourth Prelude that was singing in the air about him--a

simple, plaintive strain wandering at will over a surface of steady

rhythmic movement underneath, always creeping upward through mysteries

of sweetness, always sinking again in cadences of semi-tones. With only

a moment's pause, there came the Seventh Waltz--a rich, bold confusion

which yet was not confused. Theron's ears dwelt with eager delight upon

the chasing medley of swift, tinkling sounds, but it left his thoughts

free.

From where he reclined, he turned his head to scrutinize, one by one,

the statues in the corners. No doubt they were beautiful--for this was a

department in which he was all humility--and one of them, the figure of

a broad-browed, stately, though thick-waisted woman, bending slightly

forward and with both arms broken off, was decently robed from the hips

downward. The others were not robed at all. Theron stared at them with

the erratic, rippling jangle of the waltz in his ears, and felt that he

possessed a new and disturbing conception of what female emancipation

meant in these later days. Roving along the wall, his glance rested

again upon the largest of the Virgin pictures--a full-length figure

in sweeping draperies, its radiant, aureoled head upturned in rapt

adoration, its feet resting on a crescent moon which shone forth in

bluish silver through festooned clouds of cherubs. The incongruity

between the unashamed statues and this serene incarnation of holy

womanhood jarred upon him for the instant. Then his mind went to the

piano.

Without a break the waltz had slowed and expanded into a passage of what

might be church music, an exquisitely modulated and gently solemn chant,

through which a soft, lingering song roved capriciously, forcing the

listener to wonder where it was coming out, even while it caressed and

soothed to repose.

He looked from the Madonna to Celia. Beyond the carelessly drooping

braids and coils of hair which blazed between the candles, he could see

the outline of her brow and cheek, the noble contour of her lifted chin

and full, modelled throat, all pink as the most delicate rose leaf

is pink, against the cool lights of the altar-like wall. The sight

convicted him in the court of his own soul as a prurient and mean-minded

rustic. In the presence of such a face, of such music, there ceased to

be any such thing as nudity, and statues no more needed clothes than

did those slow, deep, magnificent chords which came now, gravely

accumulating their spell upon him.

“It is all singing!” the player called out to him over her shoulder, in

a minute of rest. “That is what Chopin does--he sings!”

She began, with an effect of thinking of something else, the Sixth

Nocturne, and Theron at first thought she was not playing anything in

particular, so deliberately, haltingly, did the chain of charm unwind

itself into sequence. Then it came closer to him than the others had

done. The dreamy, wistful, meditative beauty of it all at once oppressed

and inspired him. He saw Celia's shoulders sway under the impulse of the

RUBATO license--the privilege to invest each measure with the stress of

the whole, to loiter, to weep, to run and laugh at will--and the music

she made spoke to him as with a human voice. There was the wooing sense

of roses and moonlight, of perfumes, white skins, alluring languorous

eyes, and then--

“You know this part, of course,” he heard her say.

On the instant they had stepped from the dark, scented, starlit garden,

where the nightingale sang, into a great cathedral. A sombre and lofty

anthem arose, and filled the place with the splendor of such dignified

pomp of harmony and such suggestions of measureless choral power and

authority that Theron sat abruptly up, then was drawn resistlessly to

his feet. He stood motionless in the strange room, feeling most of all

that one should kneel to hear such music.

“This you'll know too--the funeral march from the Second Sonata,” she

was saying, before he realized that the end of the other had come. He

sank upon the divan again, bending forward and clasping his hands tight

around his knees. His heart beat furiously as he listened to the weird,

mediaeval processional, with its wild, clashing chords held down in

the bondage of an orderly sadness. There was a propelling motion in

the thing--a sense of being borne bodily along--which affected him

like dizziness. He breathed hard through the robust portions of stern,

vigorous noise, and rocked himself to and fro when, as rosy morn

breaks upon a storm-swept night, the drums are silenced for the sweet,

comforting strain of solitary melody. The clanging minor harmonies into

which the march relapses came to their abrupt end. Theron rose once

more, and moved with a hesitating step to the piano.

“I want to rest a little,” he said, with his hand on her shoulder.

“Whew! so do I,” exclaimed Celia, letting her hands fall with an

exaggerated gesture of weariness. “The sonatas take it out of one! They

are hideously difficult, you know. They are rarely played.”

“I didn't know,” remarked Theron. She seemed not to mind his hand upon

her shoulder, and he kept it there. “I didn't know anything about music

at all. What I do know now is that--that this evening is an event in my

life.”

She looked up at him and smiled. He read unsuspected tendernesses and

tolerances of friendship in the depths of her eyes, which emboldened

him to stir the fingers of that audacious hand in a lingering, caressing

trill upon her shoulder. The movement was of the faintest, but having

ventured it, he drew his hand abruptly away.

“You are getting on,” she said to him. There was an enigmatic twinkle

in the smile with which she continued to regard him. “We are Hellenizing

you at a great rate.”

A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She shifted her eyes toward

vacancy with a swift, abstracted glance, reflected for a moment, then

let a sparkling half-wink and the dimpling beginnings of an almost

roguish smile mark her assent to the conceit, whatever it might be.

“I will be with you in a moment,” he heard her say; and while the words

were still in his ears she had risen and passed out of sight through

the broad, open doorway to the right. The looped curtains fell together

behind her. Presently a mellow light spread over their delicately

translucent surface--a creamy, undulating radiance which gave the effect

of moving about among the myriad folds of the silk.

Theron gazed at these curtains for a little, then straightened his

shoulders with a gesture of decision, and, turning on his heel, went

over and examined the statues in the further corners minutely.

“If you would like some more, I will play you the Berceuse now.”

Her voice came to him with a delicious shock. He wheeled round and

beheld her standing at the piano, with one hand resting, palm upward,

on the keys. She was facing him. Her tall form was robed now in some

shapeless, clinging drapery, lustrous and creamy and exquisitely soft,

like the curtains. The wonderful hair hung free and luxuriant about her

neck and shoulders, and glowed with an intensity of fiery color which

made all the other hues of the room pale and vague. A fillet of faint,

sky-like blue drew a gracious span through the flame of red above her

temples, and from this there rose the gleam of jewels. Her head inclined

gently, gravely, toward him--with the posture of that armless woman in

marble he had been studying--and her brown eyes, regarding him from the

shadows, emitted light.

“It is a lullaby--the only one he wrote,” she said, as Theron,

pale-faced and with tightened lips, approached her. “No--you mustn't

stand there,” she added, sinking into the seat before the instrument;

“go back and sit where you were.”

The most perfect of lullabies, with its swaying abandonment to cooing

rhythm, ever and again rising in ripples to the point of insisting on

something, one knows not what, and then rocking, melting away once

more, passed, so to speak, over Theron's head. He leaned back upon the

cushions, and watched the white, rounded forearm which the falling folds

of this strange, statue-like drapery made bare.

There was more that appealed to his mood in the Third Ballade. It

seemed to him that there were words going along with it--incoherent and

impulsive yet very earnest words, appealing to him in strenuous argument

and persuasion. Each time he almost knew what they said, and strained

after their meaning with a passionate desire, and then there would come

a kind of cuckoo call, and everything would swing dancing off again into

a mockery of inconsequence.

Upon the silence there fell the pure, liquid, mellifluous melody of a

soft-throated woman singing to her lover.

“It is like Heine--simply a love-poem,” said the girl, over her

shoulder.

Theron followed now with all his senses, as she carried the Ninth

Nocturne onward. The stormy passage, which she banged finely forth,

was in truth a lover's quarrel; and then the mild, placid flow of sweet

harmonies into which the furore sank, dying languorously away upon a

silence all alive with tender memories of sound--was that not also a

part of love?

They sat motionless through a minute--the man on the divan, the girl

at the piano--and Theron listened for what he felt must be the audible

thumping of his heart.

Then, throwing back her head, with upturned face, Celia began what she

had withheld for the last--the Sixteenth Mazurka. This strange foreign

thing she played with her eyes closed, her head tilted obliquely so that

Theron could see the rose-tinted, beautiful countenance, framed as if

asleep in the billowing luxuriance of unloosed auburn hair. He fancied

her beholding visions as she wrought the music--visions full of barbaric

color and romantic forms. As his mind swam along with the gliding,

tricksy phantom of a tune, it seemed as if he too could see these

visions--as if he gazed at them through her eyes.

It could not be helped. He lifted himself noiselessly to his feet, and

stole with caution toward her. He would hear the rest of this weird,

voluptuous fantasy standing thus, so close behind her that he could look

down upon her full, uplifted lace--so close that, if she moved, that

glowing nimbus of hair would touch him.

There had been some curious and awkward pauses in this last piece, which

Theron, by some side cerebration, had put down to her not watching

what her fingers did. There came another of these pauses now--an odd,

unaccountable halt in what seemed the middle of everything. He stared

intently down upon her statuesque, dreaming face during the hush, and

caught his breath as he waited. There fell at last a few faltering

ascending notes, making a half-finished strain, and then again there was

silence.

Celia opened her eyes, and poured a direct, deep gaze into the face

above hers. Its pale lips were parted in suspense, and the color had

faded from its cheeks.

“That is the end,” she said, and, with a turn of her lithe body, stood

swiftly up, even while the echoes of the broken melody seemed panting in

the air about her for completion.

Theron put his hands to his face, and pressed them tightly against eyes

and brow for an instant. Then, throwing them aside with an expansive

downward sweep of the arms, and holding them clenched, he returned

Celia's glance. It was as if he had never looked into a woman's eyes

before.

“It CAN'T be the end!” he heard himself saying, in a low voice charged

with deep significance. He held her gaze in the grasp of his with

implacable tenacity. There was a trouble about breathing, and the mosaic

floor seemed to stir under his feet. He clung defiantly to the one idea

of not releasing her eyes.

“How COULD it be the end?” he demanded, lifting an uncertain hand to

his breast as he spoke, and spreading it there as if to control the

tumultuous fluttering of his heart. “Things don't end that way!”

A sharp, blinding spasm of giddiness closed upon and shook him, while

the brave words were on his lips. He blinked and tottered under it, as

it passed, and then backed humbly to his divan and sat down, gasping a

little, and patting his hand on his heart. There was fright written all

over his whitened face.

“We--we forgot that I am a sick man,” he said feebly, answering Celia's

look of surprised inquiry with a forced, wan smile. “I was afraid my

heart had gone wrong.”

She scrutinized him for a further moment, with growing reassurance

in her air. Then, piling up the pillows and cushions behind him for

support, for all the world like a big sister again, she stepped into the

inner room, and returned with a flagon of quaint shape and a tiny glass.

She poured this latter full to the brim of a thick yellowish, aromatic

liquid, and gave it him to drink.

“This Benedictine is all I happen to have,” she said. “Swallow it down.

It will do you good.”

Theron obeyed her. It brought tears to his eyes; but, upon reflection,

it was grateful and warming. He did feel better almost immediately. A

great wave of comfort seemed to enfold him as he settled himself back

on the divan. For that one flashing instant he had thought that he was

dying. He drew a long grateful breath of relief, and smiled his content.

Celia had seated herself beside him, a little away. She sat with her

head against the wall, and one foot curled under her, and almost faced

him.

“I dare say we forced the pace a little,” she remarked, after a pause,

looking down at the floor, with the puckers of a ruminating amusement

playing in the corners of her mouth. “It doesn't do for a man to get to

be a Greek all of a sudden. He must work along up to it gradually.”

He remembered the music. “Oh, if I only knew how to tell you,” he

murmured ecstatically, “what a revelation your playing has been to me!

I had never imagined anything like it. I shall think of it to my dying

day.”

He began to remember as well the spirit that was in the air when the

music ended. The details of what he had felt and said rose vaguely in

his mind. Pondering them, his eye roved past Celia's white-robed figure

to the broad, open doorway beyond. The curtains behind which she had

disappeared were again parted and fastened back. A dim light was burning

within, out of sight, and its faint illumination disclosed a room filled

with white marbles, white silks, white draperies of varying sorts, which

shaped themselves, as he looked, into the canopy and trappings of an

extravagantly over-sized and sumptuous bed. He looked away again.

“I wish you would tell me what you really mean by that Greek idea of

yours,” he said with the abruptness of confusion.

Celia did not display much enthusiasm in the tone of her answer. “Oh,”

she said almost indifferently, “lots of things. Absolute freedom from

moral bugbears, for one thing. The recognition that beauty is the only

thing in life that is worth while. The courage to kick out of one's life

everything that isn't worth while; and so on.”

“But,” said Theron, watching the mingled delicacy and power of the bared

arm and the shapely grace of the hand which she had lifted to her

face, “I am going to get you to teach it ALL to me.” The memories began

crowding in upon him now, and the baffling note upon which the mazurka

had stopped short chimed like a tuning-fork in his ears. “I want to be

a Greek myself, if you're one. I want to get as close to you--to your

ideal, that is, as I can. You open up to me a whole world that I had not

even dreamed existed. We swore our friendship long ago, you know: and

now, after tonight--you and the music have decided me. I am going to put

the things out of MY life that are not worthwhile. Only you must help

me; you must tell me how to begin.”

He looked up as he spoke, to enforce the almost tender entreaty of his

words. The spectacle of a yawn, only fractionally concealed behind those

talented fingers, chilled his soft speech, and sent a flush over his

face. He rose on the instant.

Celia was nothing abashed at his discovery. She laughed gayly in

confession of her fault, and held her hand out to let him help her

disentangle her foot from her draperies, and get off the divan. It

seemed to be her meaning that he should continue holding her hand after

she was also standing.

“You forgive me, don't you?” she urged smilingly. “Chopin always first

excites me, then sends me to sleep. You see how YOU sleep tonight!”

The brown, velvety eyes rested upon him, from under their heavy lids,

with a languorous kindliness. Her warm, large palm clasped his in frank

liking.

“I don't want to sleep at all,” Mr. Ware was impelled to say. “I want to

lie awake and think about--about everything all over again.”

She smiled drowsily. “And you're sure you feel strong enough to walk

home?”

“Yes,” he replied, with a lingering dilatory note, which deepened upon

reflection into a sigh. “Oh, yes.”

He followed her and her candle down the magnificent stairway again. She

blew the light out in the hall, and, opening the front door, stood with

him for a silent moment on the threshold. Then they shook hands once

more, and with a whispered good-night, parted.

Celia, returning to the blue and yellow room, lighted a cigarette and

helped herself to some Benedictine in the glass which Theron had used.

She looked meditatively at this little glass for a moment, turning it

about in her fingers with a smile. The smile warmed itself suddenly into

a joyous laugh. She tossed the glass aside, and, holding out her flowing

skirts with both hands, executed a swinging pirouette in front of the

gravely beautiful statue of the armless woman.

CHAPTER XX

It was apparent to the Rev. Theron Ware, from the very first moment of

waking next morning, that both he and the world had changed over night.

The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he had been laboring

blindly so long, was accomplished. He stood forth, so to speak, in a new

skin, and looked about him, with perceptions of quite an altered kind,

upon what seemed in every way a fresh existence. He lacked even the

impulse to turn round and inspect the cocoon from which he had emerged.

Let the past bury the past. He had no vestige of interest in it.

The change was not premature. He found himself not in the least confused

by it, or frightened. Before he had finished shaving, he knew himself

to be easily and comfortably at home in his new state, and master of all

its requirements.

It seemed as if Alice, too, recognized that he had become another man,

when he went down and took his chair at the breakfast table. They had

exchanged no words since their parting in the depot-yard the previous

evening--an event now faded off into remote vagueness in Theron's

mind. He smiled brilliantly in answer to the furtive, half-sullen,

half-curious glance she stole at him, as she brought the dishes in.

“Ah! potatoes warmed up in cream!” he said, with hearty pleasure in his

tone. “What a mind-reader you are, to be sure!”

“I'm glad you're feeling so much better,” she said briefly, taking her

seat.

“Better?” he returned. “I'm a new being!”

She ventured to look him over more freely, upon this assurance. He

perceived and catalogued, one by one, the emotions which the small brain

was expressing through those shallow blue eyes of hers. She was

turning over this, that, and the other hostile thought and childish

grievance--most of all she was dallying with the idea of asking him

where he had been till after midnight. He smiled affably in the face of

this scattering fire of peevish glances, and did not dream of resenting

any phase of them all.

“I am going down to Thurston's this morning, and order that piano sent

up today,” he announced presently, in a casual way.

“Why, Theron, can we afford it?” the wife asked, regarding him with

surprise.

“Oh, easily enough,” he replied light-heartedly. “You know they've

increased my salary.”

She shook her head. “No, I didn't. How should I? You don't realize it,”

she went on, dolefully, “but you're getting so you don't tell me the

least thing about your affairs nowadays.”

Theron laughed aloud. “You ought to be grateful--such melancholy affairs

as mine have been till now,” he declared--“that is, if it weren't absurd

to think such a thing.” Then, more soberly, he explained: “No, my girl,

it is you who don't realize. I am carrying big projects in my mind--big,

ambitious thoughts and plans upon which great things depend. They no

doubt make me seem preoccupied and absent-minded; but it is a wife's

part to understand, and make allowances, and not intrude trifles which

may throw everything out of gear. Don't think I'm scolding, my girl. I

only speak to reassure you and--and help you to comprehend. Of course I

know that you wouldn't willingly embarrass my--my career.”

“Of course not,” responded Alice, dubiously; “but--but--”

“But what? Theron felt compelled by civility to say, though on the

instant he reproached himself for the weakness of it.

“Well--I hardly know how to say it,” she faltered, “but it was nicer in

the old days, before you bothered your head about big projects, and

your career, as you call it, and were just a good, earnest, simple young

servant of the Lord. Oh, Theron!” she broke forth suddenly, with tearful

zeal, “I get sometimes lately almost scared lest you should turn out to

be a--a BACKSLIDER!”

The husband sat upright, and hardened his countenance. But yesterday the

word would have had in it all sorts of inherited terrors for him. This

morning's dawn of a new existence revealed it as merely an empty and

stupid epithet.

“These are things not to be said,” he admonished her, after a moment's

pause, and speaking with carefully measured austerity. “Least of all are

they to be said to a clergyman--by his wife.”

It was on the tip of Alice's tongue to retort, “Better by his wife than

by outsiders!” but she bit her lips, and kept the gibe back. A rebuke of

this form and gravity was a novelty in their relations. The fear that it

had been merited troubled, even while it did not convince, her mind, and

the puzzled apprehension was to be read plainly enough on her face.

Theron, noting it, saw a good deal more behind. Really, it was amazing

how much wiser he had grown all at once. He had been married for years,

and it was only this morning that he suddenly discovered how a wife

ought to be handled. He continued to look sternly away into space for a

little. Then his brows relaxed slowly and under the visible influence of

melting considerations. He nodded his head, turned toward her abruptly,

and broke the silence with labored amiability.

“Come, come--the day began so pleasantly--it was so good to feel well

again--let us talk about the piano instead. That is,” he added, with an

obvious overture to playfulness, “if the thought of having a piano is

not too distasteful to you.”

Alice yielded almost effusively to his altered mood. They went together

into the sitting-room, to measure and decide between the two available

spaces which were at their disposal, and he insisted with resolute

magnanimity on her settling this question entirely by herself. When at

last he mentioned the fact that it was Friday, and he would look over

some sermon memoranda before he went out, Alice retired to the kitchen

in openly cheerful spirits.

Theron spread some old manuscript sermons before him on his desk,

and took down his scribbling-book as well. But there his application

flagged, and he surrendered himself instead, chin on hand, to staring

out at the rhododendron in the yard. He recalled how he had seen Soulsby

patiently studying this identical bush. The notion of Soulsby, not

knowing at all how to sing, yet diligently learning those sixths,

brought a smile to his mind; and then he seemed to hear Celia calling

out over her shoulder, “That's what Chopin does--he sings!” The spirit

of that wonderful music came back to him, enfolded him in its wings. It

seemed to raise itself up--a palpable barrier between him and all that

he had known and felt and done before. That was his new birth--that

marvellous night with the piano. The conceit pleased him--not the less

because there flashed along with it the thought that it was a poet that

had been born. Yes; the former country lout, the narrow zealot, the

untutored slave groping about in the dark after silly superstitions,

cringing at the scowl of mean Pierces and Winches, was dead. There was

an end of him, and good riddance. In his place there had been born a

Poet--he spelled the word out now unabashed--a child of light, a

lover of beauty and sweet sounds, a recognizable brother to Renan and

Chopin--and Celia!

Out of the soothing, tenderly grateful revery, a practical suggestion

suddenly took shape. He acted upon it without a moment's delay, getting

out his letter-pad, and writing hurriedly--

“Dear Miss Madden,--Life will be more tolerable to me if before

nightfall I can know that there is a piano under my roof. Even if it

remains dumb, it will be some comfort to have it here and look at it,

and imagine how a great master might make it speak.

“Would it be too much to beg you to look in at Thurston's, say at eleven

this forenoon, and give me the inestimable benefit of your judgment in

selecting an instrument?

“Do not trouble to answer this, for I am leaving home now, but shall

call at Thurston's at eleven, and wait.

“Thanking you in anticipation,

“I am--”

Here Theron's fluency came to a sharp halt. There were adverbs enough

and to spare on the point of his pen, but the right one was not easy to

come at. “Gratefully,” “faithfully,” “sincerely,” “truly”--each in turn

struck a false note. He felt himself not quite any of these things. At

last he decided to write just the simple word “yours,” and then wavered

between satisfaction at his boldness, dread lest he had been over-bold,

and, worst of the lot, fear that she would not notice it one way or

the other--all the while he sealed and addressed the letter, put it

carefully in an inner pocket, and got his hat.

There was a moment's hesitation as to notifying the kitchen of his

departure. The interests of domestic discipline seemed to point the

other way. He walked softly through the hall, and let himself out by the

front door without a sound.

Down by the canal bridge he picked out an idle boy to his mind--a lad

whose aspect appeared to promise intelligence as a messenger, combined

with large impartiality in sectarian matters. He was to have ten

cents on his return; and he might report himself to his patron at the

bookstore yonder.

Theron was grateful to the old bookseller for remaining at his desk in

the rear. There was a tacit compliment in the suggestion that he was

not a mere customer, demanding instant attention. Besides, there was no

keeping “Thurston's” out of conversations in this place.

Loitering along the shelves, the young minister's eye suddenly found

itself arrested by a name on a cover. There were a dozen narrow volumes

in uniform binding, huddled together under a cardboard label of “Eminent

Women Series.” Oddly enough, one of these bore the title “George Sand.”

Theron saw there must be some mistake, as he took the book down, and

opened it. His glance hit by accident upon the name of Chopin. Then he

read attentively until almost the stroke of eleven.

“We have to make ourselves acquainted with all sorts of queer phases of

life,” he explained in self-defence to the old bookseller, then counting

out the money for the book from his lean purse. He smiled as he added,

“There seems something almost wrong about taking advantage of the

clergyman's discount for a life of George Sand.”

“I don't know,” answered the other, pleasantly. “Guess she wasn't

so much different from the rest of 'em--except that she didn't mind

appearances. We know about her. We don't know about the others.”

“I must hurry,” said Theron, turning on his heel. The haste with which

he strode out of the store, crossed the street, and made his way toward

Thurston's, did not prevent his thinking much upon the astonishing

things he had encountered in this book. Their relation to Celia forced

itself more and more upon his mind. He could recall the twinkle in

her eye, the sub-mockery in her tone, as she commented with that

half-contemptuous “Yes--George something!” upon his blundering

ignorance. His mortification at having thus exposed his dull rusticity

was swallowed up in conjectures as to just what her tolerant familiarity

with such things involved. He had never before met a young unmarried

woman who would have confessed to him any such knowledge. But then, of

course, he had never known a girl who resembled Celia in any other way.

He recognized vaguely that he must provide himself with an entire new

set of standards by which to measure and comprehend her. But it was for

the moment more interesting to wonder what her standards were. Did she

object to George Sand's behavior? Or did she sympathize with that sort

of thing? Did those statues, and the loose-flowing diaphonous toga

and unbound hair, the cigarettes, the fiery liqueur, the deliberately

sensuous music--was he to believe that they signified--?

“Good-morning, Mr. Ware. You have managed by a miracle to hit on one of

my punctual days,” said Celia.

She was standing on the doorstep, at the entrance to the musical

department of Thurston's. He had not noticed before the fact that the

sun was shining. The full glare of its strong light, enveloping her

figure as she stood, and drawing the dazzled eye for relief to the bower

of softened color, close beneath her parasol of creamy silk and lace,

was what struck him now first of all. It was as if Celia had brought the

sun with her.

Theron shook hands with her, and found joy in the perception, that his

own hand trembled. He put boldly into words the thought that came to

him.

“It was generous of you,” he said, “to wait for me out here, where all

might delight in the sight of you, instead of squandering the privilege

on a handful of clerks inside.”

Miss Madden beamed upon him, and nodded approval.

“Alcibiades never turned a prettier compliment,” she remarked. They went

in together at this, and Theron made a note of the name.

During the ensuing half-hour, the young minister followed about even

more humbly than the clerks in Celia's commanding wake. There were a

good many pianos in the big show-room overhead, and Theron found himself

almost awed by their size and brilliancy of polish, and the thought of

the tremendous sum of money they represented altogether. Not so with the

organist. She ordered them rolled around this way or that, as if they

had been so many checkers on a draught-board. She threw back their

covers with the scant ceremony of a dispensary dentist opening paupers'

mouths. She exploited their several capacities with masterful hands,

not deigning to seat herself, but just slightly bending forward, and

sweeping her fingers up and down their keyboards--able, domineering

fingers which pounded, tinkled, meditated, assented, condemned, all in

a flash, and amid what affected the layman's ears as a hopelessly

discordant hubbub.

Theron moved about in the group, nursing her parasol in his arms, and

watching her. The exaggerated deference which the clerks and salesmen

showed to her as the rich Miss Madden, seemed to him to be mixed with a

certain assertion of the claims of good-fellowship on the score of her

being a musician. There undoubtedly was a sense of freemasonry between

them. They alluded continually in technical terms to matters of which he

knew nothing, and were amused at remarks of hers which to him carried no

meaning whatever. It was evident that the young men liked her, and that

their liking pleased her. It thrilled him to think that she knew he

liked her, too, and to recall what abundant proofs she had given that

here, also, she had pleasure in the fact. He clung insistently to the

memory of these evidences. They helped him to resist a disagreeable

tendency to feel himself an intruder, an outsider, among these

pianoforte experts.

When it was all over, Celia waved the others aside, and talked with

Theron. “I suppose you want me to tell you the truth,” she said.

“There's nothing here really good. It is always much better to buy of

the makers direct.”

“Do they sell on the instalment plan?” he asked. There was a wistful

effect in his voice which caught her attention.

She looked away--out through the window on the street below--for

a moment. Then her eyes returned to his, and regarded him with a

comforting, friendly, half-motherly glance, recalling for all the world

the way Sister Soulsby had looked at him at odd times.

“Oh, you want it at once--I see,” she remarked softly. “Well, this

Adelberger is the best value for the money.”

Mr. Ware followed her finger, and beheld with dismay that it pointed

toward the largest instrument in the room--a veritable leviathan among

pianos. The price of this had been mentioned as $600. He turned over the

fact that this was two-thirds his yearly salary, and found the courage

to shake his head.

“It would be too large--much too large--for the room,” he explained.

“And, besides, it is more than I like to pay--or CAN pay, for that

matter.” It was pitiful to be explaining such details, but there was no

help for it.

They picked out a smaller one, which Celia said was at least of fair

quality. “Now leave all the bargaining to me,” she adjured him. “These

prices that they talk about in the piano trade are all in the air. There

are tremendous discounts, if one knows how to insist upon them. All

you have to do is to tell them to send it to your house--you wanted it

today, you said?”

“Yes--in memory of yesterday,” he murmured.

She herself gave the directions, and Thurston's people, now all salesmen

again, bowed grateful acquiescence. Then she sailed regally across the

room and down the stairs, drawing Theron in her train. The hirelings

made salaams to him as well; it would have been impossible to interpose

anything so trivial and squalid as talk about terms and dates of

payment.

“I am ever so much obliged to you,” he said fervently, in the

comparative solitude of the lower floor. She had paused to look at

something in the book-department.

“Of course I was entirely at your service; don't mention it,” she

replied, reaching forth her hand in an absent way for her parasol.

He held up instead the volume he had purchased. “Guess what that is! You

never would guess in this wide world!” His manner was surcharged with a

sense of the surreptitious.

“Well, then, there's no good trying, IS there?” commented Celia, her

glance roving again toward the shelves.

“It is a life of George Sand,” whispered Theron. “I've been reading it

this morning--all the Chopin part--while I was waiting for you.”

To his surprise, there was an apparently displeased contraction of her

brows as he made this revelation. For the instant, a dreadful fear of

having offended her seized upon and sickened him. But then her face

cleared, as by magic. She smiled, and let her eyes twinkle in laughter

at him, and lifted a forefinger in the most winning mockery of

admonition.

“Naughty! naughty!” she murmured back, with a roguishly solemn wink.

He had no response ready for this, but mutely handed her the parasol.

The situation had suddenly grown too confused for words, or even sequent

thoughts. Uppermost across the hurly-burly of his mind there scudded the

singular reflection that he should never hear her play on that new piano

of his. Even as it flashed by out of sight, he recognized it for one of

the griefs of his life; and the darkness which followed seemed nothing

but a revolt against the idea of having a piano at all. He would

countermand the order. He would--but she was speaking again.

They had strolled toward the door, and her voice was as placidly

conventional as if the talk had never strayed from the subject of

pianos. Theron with an effort pulled himself together, and laid hold of

her words.

“I suppose you will be going the other way,” she was saying. “I shall

have to be at the church all day. We have just got a new Mass over from

Vienna, and I'm head over heels in work at it. I can have Father Forbes

to myself today, too. That bear of a doctor has got the rheumatism, and

can't come out of his cave, thank Heaven!”

And then she was receding from view, up the sunlit, busy sidewalk, and

Theron, standing on the doorstep, ruefully rubbed his chin. She had said

he was going the other way, and, after a little pause, he made her words

good, though each step he took seemed all in despite of his personal

inclinations. Some of the passers-by bowed to him, and one or two

paused as if to shake hands and exchange greetings. He nodded responses

mechanically, but did not stop. It was as if he feared to interrupt the

process of lifting his reluctant feet and propelling them forward, lest

they should wheel and scuttle off in the opposite direction.

CHAPTER XXI

Deliberate as his progress was, the diminishing number of store-fronts

along the sidewalk, and the increasing proportion of picket-fences

enclosing domestic lawns, forced upon Theron's attention the fact that

he was nearing home. It was a trifle past the hour for his midday meal.

He was not in the least hungry; still less did he feel any desire just

now to sit about in that library living-room of his. Why should he go

home at all? There was no reason whatever--save that Alice would be

expecting him. Upon reflection, that hardly amounted to a reason. Wives,

with their limited grasp of the realities of life, were always expecting

their husbands to do things which it turned out not to be feasible for

them to do. The customary male animal spent a considerable part of his

life in explaining to his mate why it had been necessary to disappoint

or upset her little plans for his comings and goings. It was in the very

nature of things that it should be so.

Sustained by these considerations, Mr. Ware slackened his steps, then

halted irresolutely, and after a minute's hesitation, entered the small

temperance restaurant before which, as by intuition, he had paused. The

elderly woman who placed on the tiny table before him the tea and rolls

he ordered, was entirely unknown to him, he felt sure, yet none the less

she smiled at him, and spoke almost familiarly--“I suppose Mrs. Ware is

at the seaside, and you are keeping bachelor's hall?”

“Not quite that,” he responded stiffly, and hurried through the meagre

and distasteful repast, to avoid any further conversation.

There was an idea underlying her remark, however, which recurred to him

when he had paid his ten cents and got out on the street again. There

was something interesting in the thought of Alice at the seaside.

Neither of them had ever laid eyes on salt water, but Theron took for

granted the most extravagant landsman's conception of its curative and

invigorating powers. It was apparent to him that he was going to pay

much greater attention to Alice's happiness and well-being in the future

than he had latterly done. He had bought her, this very day, a superb

new piano. He was going to simply insist on her having a hired girl. And

this seaside notion--why, that was best of all.

His fancy built up pleasant visions of her feasting her delighted eyes

upon the marvel of a great ocean storm, or roaming along a beach strewn

with wonderful marine shells, exhibiting an innocent joy in their

beauty. The fresh sea-breeze blew through her hair, as he saw her in

mind's eye, and brought the hardy flush of health back upon her rather

pallid cheeks. He was prepared already hardly to know her, so robust and

revivified would she have become, by the time he went down to the depot

to meet her on her return.

For his imagination stopped short of seeing himself at the seaside.

It sketched instead pictures of whole weeks of solitary academic calm,

alone with his books and his thoughts. The facts that he had no books,

and that nobody dreamed of interfering with his thoughts, subordinated

themselves humbly to his mood. The prospect, as he mused fondly upon

it, expanded to embrace the priest's and the doctor's libraries; the

thoughts which he longed to be alone with involved close communion

with their thoughts. It could not but prove a season of immense mental

stimulation and ethical broadening. It would have its lofty poetic and

artistic side as well; the languorous melodies of Chopin stole over his

revery, as he dwelt upon these things, and soft azure and golden lights

modelled forth the exquisite outlines of tall marble forms.

He opened the gate leading to Dr. Ledsmar's house. His walk had brought

him quite out of the town, and up, by a broad main highway which

yet took on all sorts of sylvan charms, to a commanding site on the

hillside. Below, in the valley, lay Octavius, at one end half-hidden in

factory smoke, at the other, where narrow bands of water gleamed upon

the surface of a broad plain piled symmetrically with lumber, presenting

an oddly incongruous suggestion of forest odors and the simplicity of

the wilderness. In the middle distance, on gradually rising ground,

stretched a wide belt of dense, artificial foliage, peeping through

which tiled turrets and ornamented chimneys marked the polite residences

of those who, though they neither stoked the furnace fires to the west,

nor sawed the lumber on the east, lived in purple and fine linen from

the profits of this toil. Nearer at hand, pastures with grazing cows on

the one side of the road, and the nigh, weather-stained board fence

of the race-course on the other, completed the jumble of primitive

rusticity and urban complications characterizing the whole picture.

Dr. Ledsmar's house, toward which Theron's impulses had been secretly

leading him ever since Celia's parting remark about the rheumatism, was

of that spacious and satisfying order of old-fashioned houses which men

of leisure and means built for themselves while the early traditions of

a sparse and contented homogeneous population were still strong in the

Republic. There was a hospitable look about its wide veranda, its broad,

low bulk, and its big, double front door, which did not fit at all with

the sketch of a man-hating recluse that the doctor had drawn of himself.

Theron had prepared his mind for the effect of being admitted by a

Chinaman, and was taken somewhat aback when the door was opened by the

doctor himself. His reception was pleasant enough, almost cordial, but

the sense of awkwardness followed him into his host's inner room and

rested heavily upon his opening speech.

“I heard, quite by accident, that you were ill,” he said, laying aside

his hat.

“It's nothing at all,” replied Ledsmar. “Merely a stiff shoulder that I

wear from time to time in memory of my father. It ought to be quite gone

by nightfall. It was good of you to come, all the same. Sit down if you

can find a chair. As usual, we are littered up to our eyes here. That's

it--throw those things on the floor.”

Mr. Ware carefully deposited an armful of pamphlets on the rug at his

feet, and sat down. Litter was indeed the word for what he saw about

him. Bookcases, chairs, tables, the corners of the floor, were all

buried deep under disorderly strata of papers, diagrams, and opened

books. One could hardly walk about without treading on them. The dust

which danced up into the bar of sunshine streaming in from the window,

as the doctor stepped across to another chair, gave Theron new ideas

about the value of Chinese servants.

“I must thank you, first of all, doctor,” he began, “for your kindness

in coming when I was ill. 'I was sick, and ye visited me.'”

“You mustn't think of it that way,” said Ledsmar; “your friend came for

me, and of course I went; and gladly too. There was nothing that I

could do, or that anybody could do. Very interesting man, that friend

of yours. And his wife, too--both quite out of the common. I don't know

when I've seen two such really genuine people. I should like to have

known more of them. Are they still here?”

“They went yesterday,” Theron replied. His earlier shyness had worn off,

and he felt comfortably at his ease. “I don't know,” he went on, “that

the word 'genuine' is just what would have occurred to me to describe

the Soulsbys. They are very interesting people, as you say--MOST

interesting--and there was a time, I dare say, when I should have

believed in their sincerity. But of course I saw them and their

performance from the inside--like one on the stage of a theatre, you

know, instead of in the audience, and--well, I understand things better

than I used to.”

The doctor looked over his spectacles at him with a suggestion of

inquiry in his glance, and Theron continued: “I had several long talks

with her; she told me very frankly the whole story of her life--and and

it was decidedly queer, I can assure you! I may say to you--you will

understand what I mean--that since my talk with you, and the books you

lent me, I see many things differently. Indeed, when I think upon it

sometimes my old state of mind seems quite incredible to me. I can use

no word for my new state short of illumination.”

Dr. Ledsmar continued to regard his guest with that calm, interrogatory

scrutiny of his. He did not seem disposed to take up the great issue of

illumination. “I suppose,” he said after a little, “no woman can come

in contact with a priest for any length of time WITHOUT telling him the

'story of her life,' as you call it. They all do it. The thing amounts

to a law.”

The young minister's veins responded with a pleasurable thrill to the

use of the word “priest” in obvious allusion to himself. “Perhaps in

fairness I ought to explain,” he said, “that in her case it was only

done in the course of a long talk about myself. I might say that it was

by way of kindly warning to me. She saw how I had become unsettled in

many--many of my former views--and she was nervous lest this should lead

me to--to--”

“To throw up the priesthood,” the doctor interposed upon his hesitation.

“Yes, I know the tribe. Why, my dear sir, your entire profession would

have perished from the memory of mankind, if it hadn't been for women.

It is a very curious subject. Lots of thinkers have dipped into it,

but no one has gone resolutely in with a search-light and exploited the

whole thing. Our boys, for instance, traverse in their younger years all

the stages of the childhood of the race. They have terrifying dreams

of awful monsters and giant animals of which they have never so much

as heard in their waking hours; they pass through the lust for digging

caves, building fires, sleeping out in the woods, hunting with bows

and arrows--all remote ancestral impulses; they play games with stones,

marbles, and so on at regular stated periods of the year which they

instinctively know, just as they were played in the Bronze Age, and

heaven only knows how much earlier. But the boy goes through all this,

and leaves it behind him--so completely that the grown man feels himself

more a stranger among boys of his own place who are thinking and doing

precisely the things he thought and did a few years before, than he

would among Kurds or Esquimaux. But the woman is totally different. She

is infinitely more precocious as a girl. At an age when her slow brother

is still stubbing along somewhere in the neolithic period, she has flown

way ahead to a kind of mediaeval stage, or dawn of mediaevalism, which

is peculiarly her own. Having got there, she stays there; she dies

there. The boy passes her, as the tortoise did the hare. He goes on,

if he is a philosopher, and lets her remain in the dark ages, where she

belongs. If he happens to be a fool, which is customary, he stops and

hangs around in her vicinity.”

Theron smiled. “We priests,” he said, and paused again to enjoy the

words--“I suppose I oughtn't to inquire too closely just where we belong

in the procession.”

“We are considering the question impersonally,” said the doctor. “First

of all, what you regard as religion is especially calculated to attract

women. They remain as superstitious today, down in the marrow of their

bones, as they were ten thousand years ago. Even the cleverest of

them are secretly afraid of omens, and respect auguries. Think of the

broadest women you know. One of them will throw salt over her shoulder

if she spills it. Another drinks money from her cup by skimming the

bubbles in a spoon. Another forecasts her future by the arrangement of

tea-grounds. They make the constituency to which an institution based

on mysteries, miracles, and the supernatural generally, would naturally

appeal. Secondly, there is the personality of the priest.”

“Yes,” assented Ware. There rose up before him, on the instant, the

graceful, portly figure and strong, comely face of Father Forbes.

“Women are not a metaphysical people. They do not easily follow

abstractions. They want their dogmas and religious sentiments embodied

in a man, just as they do their romantic fancies. Of course you

Protestants, with your married clergy, see less of the effects of this

than celibates do, but even with you there is a great deal in it.

Why, the very institution of celibacy itself was forced upon the early

Christian Church by the scandal of rich Roman ladies loading bishops

and handsome priests with fabulous gifts until the passion for currying

favor with women of wealth, and marrying them or wheedling their

fortunes from them, debauched the whole priesthood. You should read your

Jerome.”

“I will--certainly,” said the listener, resolving to remember the name

and refer it to the old bookseller.

“Well, whatever laws one sect or another makes, the woman's attitude

toward the priest survives. She desires to see him surrounded by

flower-pots and candles, to have him smelling of musk. She would like

to curl his hair, and weave garlands in it. Although she is not learned

enough to have ever heard of such things, she intuitively feels in his

presence a sort of backwash of the old pagan sensuality and lascivious

mysticism which enveloped the priesthood in Greek and Roman days. Ugh!

It makes one sick!”

Dr. Ledsmar rose, as he spoke, and dismissed the topic with a dry little

laugh. “Come, let me show you round a bit,” he said. “My shoulder is

easier walking than sitting.”

“Have you never written a book yourself?” asked Theron, getting to his

feet.

“I have a thing on serpent-worship,” the scientist replied--“written

years ago.”