“I can't tell you how I should enjoy reading it,” urged the other.

The doctor laughed again. “You'll have to learn German, then, I 'm

afraid. It is still in circulation in Germany, I believe, on its merits

as a serious book. I haven't a copy of the edition in English. THAT was

all exhausted by collectors who bought it for its supposed obscenity,

like Burton's 'Arabian Nights.' Come this way, and I will show you my

laboratory.”

They moved out of the room, and through a passage, Ledsmar talking as

he led the way. “I took up that subject, when I was at college, by a

curious chance. I kept a young monkey in my rooms, which had been born

in captivity. I brought home from a beer hall--it was in Germany--some

pretzels one night, and tossed one toward the monkey. He jumped toward

it, then screamed and ran back shuddering with fright. I couldn't

understand it at first. Then I saw that the curled pretzel, lying there

on the floor, was very like a little coiled-up snake. The monkey had

never seen a snake, but it was in his blood to be afraid of one.

That incident changed my whole life for me. Up to that evening, I had

intended to be a lawyer.”

Theron did not feel sure that he had understood the point of the

anecdote. He looked now, without much interest, at some dark little

tanks containing thick water, a row of small glass cases with adders and

other lesser reptiles inside, and a general collection of boxes, jars,

and similar receptacles connected with the doctor's pursuits. Further

on was a smaller chamber, with a big empty furnace, and shelves bearing

bottles and apparatus like a drugstore.

It was pleasanter in the conservatory--a low, spacious structure with

broad pathways between the plants, and an awning over the sunny side

of the roof. The plants were mostly orchids, he learned. He had read

of them, but never seen any before. No doubt they were curious; but he

discovered nothing to justify the great fuss made about them. The heat

grew oppressive inside, and he was glad to emerge into the garden. He

paused under the grateful shade of a vine-clad trellis, took off his

hat, and looked about him with a sigh of relief. Everything seemed

old-fashioned and natural and delightfully free from pretence in the

big, overgrown field of flowers and shrubs.

Theron recalled with some surprise Celia's indictment of the doctor as a

man with no poetry in his soul. “You must be extremely fond of flowers,”

he remarked.

Dr. Ledsmar shrugged his well shoulder. “They have their points,” he

said briefly. “These are all dioecious here. Over beyond are monoecious

species. My work is to test the probabilities for or against Darwin's

theory that hermaphroditism in plants is a late by-product of these

earlier forms.”

“And is his theory right?” asked Mr. Ware, with a polite show of

interest.

“We may know in the course of three or four hundred years,” replied

Ledsmar. He looked up into his guest's face with a quizzical half-smile.

“That is a very brief period for observation when such a complicated

question as sex is involved,” he added. “We have been studying the

female of our own species for some hundreds of thousands of years, and

we haven't arrived at the most elementary rules governing her actions.”

They had moved along to a bed of tall plants, the more forward of which

were beginning to show bloom. “Here another task will begin next month,”

the doctor observed. “These are salvias, pentstemons, and antirrhinums,

or snapdragons, planted very thick for the purpose. Humble-bees bore

holes through their base, to save the labor of climbing in and out of

the flowers, and we don't quite know yet why some hive-bees discover and

utilize these holes at once, while others never do. It may be merely the

old-fogy conservatism of the individual, or there may be a law in it.”

These seemed very paltry things for a man of such wisdom to bother

his head about. Theron looked, as he was bidden, at the rows of hives

shining in the hot sun on a bench along the wall, but offered no comment

beyond a casual, “My mother was always going to keep bees, but somehow

she never got around to it. They say it pays very well, though.”

“The discovery of the reason why no bee will touch the nectar of the

EPIPACTIS LATIFOLIA, though it is sweet to our taste, and wasps are

greedy for it, WOULD pay,” commented the doctor. “Not like a blue

rhododendron, in mere money, but in recognition. Lots of men have

achieved a half-column in the 'Encyclopedia Britannica' on a smaller

basis than that.”

They stood now at the end of the garden, before a small, dilapidated

summer-house. On the bench inside, facing him, Theron saw a strange

recumbent figure stretched at full length, apparently sound asleep, or

it might be dead. Looking closer, with a startled surprise, he made out

the shaven skull and outlandish garb of a Chinaman. He turned toward his

guide in the expectation of a scene.

The doctor had already taken out a note-book and pencil, and was drawing

his watch from his pocket. He stepped into the summer-house, and,

lifting the Oriental's limp arm, took account of his pulse. Then, with

head bowed low, side-wise, he listened for the heart-action. Finally, he

somewhat brusquely pushed back one of the Chinaman's eyelids, and made

a minute inspection of what the operation disclosed. Returning to the

light, he inscribed some notes in his book, put it back in his pocket,

and came out. In answer to Theron's marvelling stare, he pointed toward

a pipe of odd construction lying on the floor beneath the sleeper.

“This is one of my regular afternoon duties,” he explained, again with

the whimsical half-smile. “I am increasing his dose monthly by regular

stages, and the results promise to be rather remarkable. Heretofore,

observations have been made mostly on diseased or morbidly deteriorated

subjects. This fellow of mine is strong as an ox, perfectly nourished,

and watched over intelligently. He can assimilate opium enough to kill

you and me and every other vertebrate creature on the premises, without

turning a hair, and he hasn't got even fairly under way yet.”

The thing was unpleasant, and the young minister turned away. They

walked together up the path toward the house. His mind was full now of

the hostile things which Celia had said about the doctor. He had vaguely

sympathized with her then, upon no special knowledge of his own. Now he

felt that his sentiments were vehemently in accord with hers. The doctor

WAS a beast.

And yet--as they moved slowly along through the garden the thought took

sudden shape in his mind--it would be only justice for him to get also

the doctor's opinion of Celia. Even while they offended and repelled

him, he could not close his eyes to the fact that the doctor's

experiments and occupations were those of a patient and exact man of

science--a philosopher. And what he had said about women--there was

certainly a great deal of acumen and shrewd observation in that. If

he would only say what he really thought about Celia, and about her

relations with the priest! Yes, Theron recognized now there was nothing

else that he so much needed light upon as those puzzling ties between

Celia and Father Forbes.

He paused, with a simulated curiosity, about one of the flower-beds.

“Speaking of women and religion”--he began, in as casual a tone as he

could command--“I notice curiously enough in my own case, that as I

develop in what you may call the--the other direction, my wife, who

formerly was not especially devote, is being strongly attracted by the

most unthinking and hysterical side of--of our church system.”

The doctor looked at him, nodded, and stooped to nip some buds from a

stalk in the bed.

“And another case,” Theron went on--“of course it was all so new and

strange to me--but the position which Miss Madden seems to occupy about

the Catholic Church here--I suppose you had her in mind when you spoke.”

Ledsmar stood up. “My mind has better things to busy itself with than

mad asses of that description,” he replied. “She is not worth talking

about--a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed lewdness. If

she were even a type, she might be worth considering; but she is simply

an abnormal sport, with a little brain addled by notions that she is

like Hypatia, and a large impudence rendered intolerable by the fact

that she has money. Her father is a decent man. He ought to have her

whipped.”

Mr. Ware drew himself erect, as he listened to these outrageous words.

It would be unmanly, he felt, to allow such comments upon an absent

friend to pass unrebuked. Yet there was the courtesy due to a host to

be considered. His mind, fluttering between these two extremes,

alighted abruptly upon a compromise. He would speak so as to show his

disapproval, yet not so as to prevent his finding out what he wanted to

know. The desire to hear Ledsmar talk about Celia and the priest

seemed now to have possessed him for a long time, to have dictated his

unpremeditated visit out here, to have been growing in intensity all the

while he pretended to be interested in orchids and bees and the drugged

Chinaman. It tugged passionately at his self-control as he spoke.

“I cannot in the least assent to your characterization of the lady,” he

began with rhetorical dignity.

“Bless me!” interposed the doctor, with deceptive cheerfulness, “that is

not required of you at all. It is a strictly personal opinion, offered

merely as a contribution to the general sum of hypotheses.”

“But,” Theron went on, feeling his way, “of course, I gathered that

evening that you had prejudices in the matter; but these are rather

apart from the point I had in view. We were speaking, you will remember,

of the traditional attitude of women toward priests--wanting to curl

their hair and put flowers in it, you know, and that suggested to me

some individual illustrations, and it occurred to me to wonder just what

were the relations between Miss Madden and--and Father Forbes. She

said this morning, for instance--I happened to meet her, quite by

accident--that she was going to the church to practise a new piece, and

that she could have Father Forbes to herself all day. Now that would

be quite an impossible remark in our--that is, in any Protestant

circles--and purely as a matter of comparison, I was curious to ask you

just how much there was in it. I ask you, because going there so much

you have had exceptional opportunities for--”

A sharp exclamation from his companion interrupted the clergyman's

hesitating monologue. It began like a high-pitched, violent word, but

dwindled suddenly into a groan of pain. The doctor's face, too, which

had on the flash of Theron's turning seemed given over to unmixed anger,

took on an expression of bodily suffering instead.

“My shoulder has grown all at once excessively painful,” he said

hastily. “I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me, Mr. Ware.”

Carrying the afflicted side with ostentatious caution, he led the way

without ado round the house to the front gate on the road. He had put

his left hand under his coat to press it against his aching shoulder,

and his right hung palpably helpless. This rendered it impossible for

him to shake hands with his guest in parting.

“You're sure there's nothing I can do,” said Theron, lingering on the

outer side of the gate. “I used to rub my father's shoulders and back;

I'd gladly--”

“Oh, not for worlds!” groaned the doctor. His anguish was so impressive

that Theron, as he walked down the road, quite missed the fact that

there had been no invitation to come again.

Dr. Ledsmar stood for a minute or two, his gaze meditatively following

the retreating figure. Then he went in, opening the front door with

his right hand, and carrying himself once more as if there were no such

thing as rheumatism in the world. He wandered on through the hall into

the laboratory, and stopped in front of the row of little tanks full of

water.

Some deliberation was involved in whatever his purpose might be, for he

looked from one tank to another with a pondering, dilatory gaze. At last

he plunged his hand into the opaque fluid and drew forth a long, slim,

yellowish-green lizard, with a coiling, sinuous tail and a pointed, evil

head. The reptile squirmed and doubled itself backward around his wrist,

darting out and in with dizzy swiftness its tiny forked tongue.

The doctor held the thing up to the light, and, scrutinizing it through

his spectacles, nodded his head in sedate approval. A grim smile curled

in his beard.

“Yes, you are the type,” he murmured to it, with evident enjoyment in

the conceit. “Your name isn't Johnny any more. It's the Rev. Theron

Ware.”

CHAPTER XXII

The annual camp-meeting of the combined Methodist districts of Octavius

and Thessaly was held this year in the second half of September, a

little later than usual. Of the nine days devoted to this curious

survival of primitive Wesleyanism, the fifth fell upon a Saturday. On

the noon of that day the Rev. Theron Ware escaped for some hours from

the burden of work and incessant observation which he shared with twenty

other preachers, and walked alone in the woods.

The scene upon which he turned his back was one worth looking at. A

spacious, irregularly defined clearing in the forest lay level as a

tennis-court, under the soft haze of autumn sunlight. In the centre was

a large, roughly constructed frame building, untouched by paint, but

stained and weather-beaten with time. Behind it were some lines of

horse-sheds, and still further on in that direction, where the trees

began, the eye caught fragmentary glimpses of low roofs and the fronts

of tiny cottages, withdrawn from full view among the saplings and

underbrush. At the other side of the clearing, fully fourscore tents

were pitched, some gray and mended, others dazzlingly white in their

newness. The more remote of these tents fell into an orderly arrangement

of semi-circular form, facing that part of the engirdling woods where

the trees were largest, and their canopy of overhanging foliage was

lifted highest from the ground. Inside this half-ring of tents were many

rounded rows of benches, which followed in narrowing lines the idea of

an amphitheatre cut in two. In the centre, just under the edge of the

roof of boughs, rose a wooden pagoda, in form not unlike an open-air

stand for musicians. In front of this, and leading from it on the level

of its floor, there projected a platform, railed round with aggressively

rustic woodwork. The nearest benches came close about this platform.

At the hour when Theron started away, there were few enough signs of

life about this encampment. The four or five hundred people who were in

constant residence were eating their dinners in the big boarding-house,

or the cottages or the tents. It was not the time of day for strangers.

Even when services were in progress by daylight, the regular attendants

did not make much of a show, huddled in a gray-black mass at the front

of the auditorium, by comparison with the great green and blue expanses

of nature about them.

The real spectacle was in the evening when, as the shadows gathered, big

clusters of kerosene torches, hung on the trees facing the audience were

lighted. The falling darkness magnified the glow of the lights, and

the size and importance of what they illumined. The preacher, bending

forward over the rails of the platform, and fastening his eyes upon the

abashed faces of those on the “anxious seat” beneath him, borrowed an

effect of druidical mystery from the wall of blackness about him, from

the flickering reflections on the branches far above, from the cool

night air which stirred across the clearing. The change was in the blood

of those who saw and heard him, too. The decorum and half-heartedness

of their devotions by day deepened under the glare of the torches into a

fervent enthusiasm, even before the services began. And if there was in

the rustic pulpit a man whose prayers or exhortations could stir their

pulses, they sang and groaned and bellowed out their praises with an

almost barbarous license, such as befitted the wilderness.

But in the evening not all were worshippers. For a dozen miles round

on the country-side, young farm-workers and their girls regarded the

camp-meeting as perhaps the chief event of the year--no more to be

missed than the country fair or the circus, and offering, from many

points of view, more opportunities for genuine enjoyment than either.

Their behavior when they came was pretty bad--not the less so because

all the rules established by the Presiding Elders for the regulation of

strangers took it for granted that they would act as viciously as

they knew how. These sight-seers sometimes ventured to occupy the back

benches where the light was dim. More often they stood outside, in the

circular space between the tents and the benches, and mingled cat-calls,

drovers' yelps, and all sorts of mocking cries and noises with the

“Amens” of the earnest congregation. Their rough horse-play on the

fringe of the sanctified gathering was grievous enough; everybody knew

that much worse things went on further out in the surrounding darkness.

Indeed, popular report gave to these external phases of the

camp-meeting an even more evil fame than attached to the later moonlight

husking-bees, or the least reputable of the midwinter dances at Dave

Randall's low halfway house.

Cynics said that the Methodists found consolation for this scandal in

the large income they derived from their unruly visitors' gate-money.

This was unfair. No doubt the money played its part, but there was

something else far more important. The pious dwellers in the camp,

intent upon reviving in their poor modern way the character and

environment of the heroic early days, felt the need of just this hostile

and scoffing mob about them to bring out the spirit they sought. Theirs

was pre-eminently a fighting religion, which languished in peaceful

fair weather, but flamed high in the storm. The throng of loafers and

light-minded worldlings of both sexes, with their jeering interruptions

and lewd levity of conduct, brought upon the scene a kind of visible

personal devil, with whom the chosen could do battle face to face. The

daylight services became more and more perfunctory, as the sojourn in

the woods ran its course, and interest concentrated itself upon the

night meetings, for the reason that THEN came the fierce wrestle with

a Beelzebub of flesh and blood. And it was not so one-sided a contest,

either!

No evening passed without its victories for the pulpit. Careless or

mischievous young people who were pushed into the foremost ranks of the

mockers, and stood grinning and grimacing under the lights, would of

a sudden feel a spell clamped upon them. They would hear a strange,

quavering note in the preacher's voice, catch the sense of a piercing,

soul-commanding gleam in his eye--not at all to be resisted. These

occult forces would take control of them, drag them forward as in a

dream to the benches under the pulpit, and abase them there like

worms in the dust. And then the preacher would descend, and the elders

advance, and the torch-fires would sway and dip before the wind of the

mighty roar that went up in triumph from the brethren.

These combats with Satan at close quarters, if they made the week-day

evenings exciting, reacted with an effect of crushing dulness upon the

Sunday services. The rule was to admit no strangers to the grounds

from Saturday night to Monday morning. Every year attempts were made to

rescind or modify this rule, and this season at least three-fourths of

the laymen in attendance had signed a petition in favor of opening

the gates. The two Presiding Elders, supported by a dozen of the older

preachers, resisted the change, and they had the backing of the more

bigoted section of the congregation from Octavius. The controversy

reached a point where Theron's Presiding Elder threatened to quit the

grounds, and the leaders of the open-Sunday movement spoke freely of the

ridiculous figure which its cranks and fanatics made poor Methodism cut

in the eyes of modern go-ahead American civilization. Then Theron Ware

saw his opportunity, and preached an impromptu sermon upon the sanctity

of the Sabbath, which ended all discussion. Sometimes its arguments

seemed to be on one side, sometimes on the other, but always they were

clothed with so serene a beauty of imagery, and moved in such a lofty

and rarefied atmosphere of spiritual exaltation, that it was impossible

to link them to so sordid a thing as this question of gate-money. When

he had finished, nobody wanted the gates opened. The two factions found

that the difference between them had melted out of existence. They sat

entranced by the charm of the sermon; then, glancing around at the empty

benches, glaringly numerous in the afternoon sunlight, they whispered

regrets that ten thousand people had not been there to hear that

marvellous discourse. Theron's conquest was of exceptional dimensions.

The majority, whose project he had defeated, were strangers who

appreciated and admired his effort most. The little minority of his own

flock, though less susceptible to the influence of graceful diction

and delicately balanced rhetoric, were proud of the distinction he had

reflected upon them, and delighted with him for having won their

fight. The Presiding Elders wrung his hand with a significant grip. The

extremists of his own charge beamed friendship upon him for the first

time. He was the veritable hero of the week.

The prestige of this achievement made it the easier for Theron to get

away by himself next day, and walk in the woods. A man of such power

had a right to solitude. Those who noted his departure from the camp

remembered with pleasure that he was to preach again on the morrow.

He was going to commune with God in the depths of the forest, that the

Message next day might be clearer and more luminous still.

Theron strolled for a little, with an air of aimlessness, until he was

well outside the more or less frequented neighborhood of the camp.

Then he looked at the sun and the lay of the land with that informing

scrutiny of which the farm-bred boy never loses the trick, turned, and

strode at a rattling pace down the hillside. He knew nothing personally

of this piece of woodland--a spur of the great Adirondack wilderness

thrust southward into the region of homesteads and dairies and

hop-fields--but he had prepared himself by a study of the map, and

he knew where he wanted to go. Very Soon he hit upon the path he had

counted upon finding, and at this he quickened his gait.

Three months of the new life had wrought changes in Theron. He bore

himself more erectly, for one thing; his shoulders were thrown back, and

seemed thicker. The alteration was even more obvious in his face. The

effect of lank, wistful, sallow juvenility had vanished. It was the

countenance of a mature, well-fed, and confident man, firmer and more

rounded in its outlines, and with a glow of health on its whole surface.

Under the chin were the suggestions of fulness which bespeak an easy

mind. His clothes were new; the frock-coat fitted him, and the thin,

dark-colored autumn overcoat, with its silk lining exposed at the

breast, gave a masculine bulk and shape to his figure. He wore a shining

tall hat, and, in haste though he was, took pains not to knock it

against low-hanging branches.

All had gone well--more than well--with him. The second Quarterly

Conference had passed without a ripple. Both the attendance and the

collections at his church were larger than ever before, and the tone of

the congregation toward him was altered distinctly for the better. As

for himself, he viewed with astonished delight the progress he had made

in his own estimation. He had taken Sister Soulsby's advice, and the

results were already wonderful. He had put aside, once and for all, the

thousand foolish trifles and childish perplexities which formerly had

racked his brain, and worried him out of sleep and strength. He borrowed

all sorts of books boldly now from the Octavius public library, and

could swim with a calm mastery and enjoyment upon the deep waters into

which Draper and Lecky and Laing and the rest had hurled him. He dallied

pleasurably, a little languorously, with a dozen aspects of the case

against revealed religion, ranging from the mild heterodoxy of Andover's

qualms to the rude Ingersoll's rollicking negation of God himself, as a

woman of coquetry might play with as many would-be lovers. They amused

him; they were all before him to choose; and he was free to postpone

indefinitely the act of selection. There was a sense of the luxurious in

this position which softened bodily as well as mental fibres. He ceased

to grow indignant at things below or outside his standards, and he

bought a small book which treated of the care of the hand and finger

nails.

Alice had accepted with deference his explanation that shapely hands

played so important a part in pulpit oratory. For that matter, she now

accepted whatever he said or did with admirable docility. It was months

since he could remember her venturing upon a critical attitude toward

him.

She had not wished to leave home, for the seaside or any other resort,

during the summer, but had worked outside in her garden more than usual.

This was inexpensive, and it seemed to do her as much good as a holiday

could have done. Her new devotional zeal was now quite an odd thing; it

had not slackened at all from the revival pitch. At the outset she had

tried several times to talk with her husband upon this subject. He

had discouraged conversation about her soul and its welfare, at first

obliquely, then, under compulsion, with some directness. His thoughts

were absorbed, he said, by the contemplation of vast, abstract schemes

of creation and the government of the universe, and it only diverted and

embarrassed his mind to try to fasten it upon the details of personal

salvation. Thereafter the topic was not broached between them.

She bestowed a good deal of attention, too, upon her piano. The knack of

a girlish nimbleness of touch had returned to her after a few weeks, and

she made music which Theron supposed was very good--for her. It pleased

him, at all events, when he sat and listened to it; but he had a far

greater pleasure, as he listened, in dwelling upon the memories of the

yellow and blue room which the sounds always brought up. Although three

months had passed, Thurston's had never asked for the first payment

on the piano, or even sent in a bill. This impressed him as being

peculiarly graceful behavior on his part, and he recognized its delicacy

by not going near Thurston's at all.

An hour's sharp walk, occasionally broken by short cuts across open

pastures, but for the most part on forest paths, brought Theron to the

brow of a small knoll, free from underbrush, and covered sparsely with

beech-trees. The ground was soft with moss and the powdered remains of

last year's foliage; the leaves above him were showing the first yellow

stains of autumn. A sweet smell of ripening nuts was thick upon the

air, and busy rustlings and chirpings through the stillness told how the

chipmunks and squirrels were attending to their harvest.

Theron had no ears for these noises of the woodland. He had halted, and

was searching through the little vistas offered between the stout gray

trunks of the beeches for some sign of a more sophisticated sort. Yes!

there were certainly voices to be heard, down in the hollow. And

now, beyond all possibility of mistake, there came up to him the low,

rhythmic throb of music. It was the merest faint murmur of music, made

up almost wholly of groaning bass notes, but it was enough. He moved

down the slope, swiftly at first, then with increasing caution. The

sounds grew louder as he advanced, until he could hear the harmony of

the other strings in its place beside the uproar of the big fiddles, and

distinguish from both the measured noise of many feet moving as one.

He reached a place from which, himself unobserved, he could overlook

much of what he had come to see.

The bottom of the glade below him lay out in the full sunshine, as flat

and as velvety in its fresh greenness as a garden lawn. Its open expanse

was big enough to accommodate several distinct crowds, and here the

crowds were--one massed about an enclosure in which young men were

playing at football, another gathered further off in a horse-shoe curve

at the end of a baseball diamond, and a third thronging at a point where

the shade of overhanging woods began, focussed upon a centre of interest

which Theron could not make out. Closer at hand, where a shallow stream

rippled along over its black-slate bed, some little boys, with legs

bared to the thighs, were paddling about, under the charge of two men

clad in long black gowns. There were others of these frocked monitors

scattered here and there upon the scene--pallid, close-shaven, monkish

figures, who none the less wore modern hats, and superintended with

knowledge the games of the period. Theron remembered that these were the

Christian Brothers, the semi-monastic teachers of the Catholic school.

And this was the picnic of the Catholics of Octavius. He gazed in

mingled amazement and exhilaration upon the spectacle. There seemed

to be literally thousands of people on the open fields before him, and

apparently there were still other thousands in the fringes of the woods

round about. The noises which arose from this multitude--the shouts of

the lads in the water, the playful squeals of the girls in the swings,

the fused uproar of the more distant crowds, and above all the diligent,

ordered strains of the dance-music proceeding from some invisible

distance in the greenwood--charmed his ears with their suggestion of

universal merriment. He drew a long breath--half pleasure, half wistful

regret--as he remembered that other gathering in the forest which he had

left behind.

At any rate, it should be well behind him today, whatever the morrow

might bring! Evidently he was on the wrong side of the circle for the

headquarters of the festivities. He turned and walked to the right

through the beeches, making a detour, under cover, of the crowds at

play. At last he rounded the long oval of the clearing, and found

himself at the very edge of that largest throng of all, which had been

too far away for comprehension at the beginning. There was no mystery

now. A rough, narrow shed, fully fifty feet in length, imposed itself

in an arbitrary line across the face of this crowd, dividing it into two

compact halves. Inside this shed, protected all round by a waist-high

barrier of boards, on top of which ran a flat, table-like covering, were

twenty men in their shirt-sleeves, toiling ceaselessly to keep abreast

of the crowd's thirst for beer. The actions of these bartenders greatly

impressed Theron. They moved like so many machines, using one

hand, apparently, to take money and give change, and with the other

incessantly sweeping off rows of empty glasses, and tossing forward in

their place fresh, foaming glasses five at a time. Hundreds of arms and

hands were continually stretched out, on both sides of the shed, toward

this streaming bar, and through the babel of eager cries rose without

pause the racket of mallets tapping new kegs.

Theron had never seen any considerable number of his fellow-citizens

engaged in drinking lager beer before. His surprise at the facility of

those behind the bar began to yield, upon observation, to a profound

amazement at the thirst of those before it. The same people seemed to

be always in front, emptying the glasses faster than the busy men inside

could replenish them, and clamoring tirelessly for more. Newcomers had

to force their way to the bar by violent efforts, and once there they

stayed until pushed bodily aside. There were actually women to be seen

here and there in the throng, elbowing and shoving like the rest for a

place at the front. Some of the more gallant young men fought their

way outward, from time to time, carrying for safety above their heads

glasses of beer which they gave to young and pretty girls standing on

the fringe of the crowd, among the trees.

Everywhere a remarkable good-humor prevailed. Once a sharp fight broke

out, just at the end of the bar nearest Theron, and one young man was

knocked down. A rush of the onlookers confused everything before the

minister's eyes for a minute, and then he saw the aggrieved combatant up

on his legs again, consenting under the kindly pressure of the crowd to

shake hands with his antagonist, and join him in more beer. The incident

caught his fancy. There was something very pleasingly human, he thought,

in this primitive readiness to resort to fisticuffs, and this frank and

genial reconciliation.

Perhaps there was something contagious in this wholesale display of

thirst, for the Rev. Mr. Ware became conscious of a notion that he

should like to try a glass of beer. He recalled having heard that

lager was really a most harmless beverage. Of course it was out of the

question that he should show himself at the bar. Perhaps some one would

bring him out a glass, as if he were a pretty girl. He looked about for

a possible messenger. Turning, he found himself face to face with two

smiling people, into whose eyes he stared for an instant in dumfounded

blankness. Then his countenance flashed with joy, and he held out both

hands in greeting. It was Father Forbes and Celia.

“We stole down upon you unawares,” said the priest, in his cheeriest

manner. He wore a brown straw hat, and loose clothes hardly at all

clerical in form, and had Miss Madden's arm drawn lightly within his

own. “We could barely believe our eyes--that it could be you whom we

saw, here among the sinners!”

“I am in love with your sinners,” responded Theron, as he shook hands

with Celia, and trusted himself to look fully into her eyes. “I've had

five days of the saints, over in another part of the woods, and they've

bored the head off me.”

CHAPTER XXIII

At the command of Father Forbes, a lad who was loitering near them went

down through the throng to the bar, and returned with three glasses of

beer. It pleased the Rev. Mr. Ware that the priest should have taken

it for granted that he would do as the others did. He knocked his glass

against theirs in compliance with a custom strange to him, but which

they seemed to understand very well. The beer itself was not so

agreeable to the taste as he had expected, but it was cold and

refreshing.

When the boy had returned with the glasses, the three stood for a moment

in silence, meditatively watching the curious scene spread below them.

Beyond the bar, Theron could catch now through the trees regularly

recurring glimpses of four or five swings in motion. These were nearest

him, and clearest to the vision as well, at the instant when they

reached their highest forward point. The seats were filled with girls,

some of them quite grown young women, and their curving upward sweep

through the air was disclosing at its climax a remarkable profusion of

white skirts and black stockings. The sight struck him as indecorous in

the extreme, and he turned his eyes away. They met Celia's; and there

was something latent in their brown depths which prompted him, after a

brief dalliance of interchanging glances, to look again at the swings.

“That old maid Curran is really too ridiculous, with those white

stockings of hers,” remarked Celia; “some friend ought to tell her to

dye them.”

“Or pad them,” suggested Father Forbes, with a gay little chuckle. “I

daresay the question of swings and ladies' stockings hardly arises with

you, over at the camp-meeting, Mr. Ware?”

Theron laughed aloud at the conceit. “I should say not!” he replied.

“I'm just dying to see a camp-meeting!” said Celia. “You hear such racy

accounts of what goes on at them.”

“Don't go, I beg of you!” urged Theron, with doleful emphasis. “Don't

let's even talk about them. I should like to feel this afternoon as if

there was no such thing within a thousand miles of me as a camp-meeting.

Do you know, all this interests me enormously. It is a revelation to me

to see these thousands of good, decent, ordinary people, just frankly

enjoying themselves like human beings. I suppose that in this whole huge

crowd there isn't a single person who will mention the subject of his

soul to any other person all day long.”

“I should think the assumption was a safe one,” said the priest,

smilingly, “unless,” he added on afterthought, “it be by way of a genial

profanity. There used to be some old Clare men who said 'Hell to my

soul!' when they missed at quoits, but I haven't heard it for a long

time. I daresay they're all dead.”

“I shall never forget that death-bed--where I saw you first,” remarked

Theron, musingly. “I date from that experience a whole new life. I have

been greatly struck lately, in reading our 'Northern Christian Advocate'

to see in the obituary notices of prominent Methodists how over and over

again it is recorded that they got religion in their youth through being

frightened by some illness of their own, or some epidemic about them.

The cholera year of 1832 seems to have made Methodists hand over

fist. Even to this day our most successful revivalists, those who work

conversions wholesale wherever they go, do it more by frightful pictures

of hell-fire surrounding the sinner's death-bed than anything else.

You could hear the same thing at our camp-meeting tonight, if you were

there.”

“There isn't so much difference as you think,” said Father Forbes,

dispassionately. “Your people keep examining their souls, just as

children keep pulling up the bulbs they have planted to see are there

any roots yet. Our people are more satisfied to leave their souls alone,

once they have been planted, so to speak, by baptism. But fear of hell

governs them both, pretty much alike. As I remember saying to you once

before, there is really nothing new under the sun. Even the saying isn't

new. Though there seem to have been the most tremendous changes in

races and civilizations and religions, stretching over many thousands

of years, yet nothing is in fact altered very much. Where religions are

concerned, the human race are still very like savages in a dangerous

wood in the dark, telling one another ghost stories around a camp-fire.

They have always been like that.”

“What nonsense!” cried Celia. “I have no patience with such gloomy

rubbish. The Greeks had a religion full of beauty and happiness and

light-heartedness, and they weren't frightened of death at all. They

made the image of death a beautiful boy, with a torch turned down. Their

greatest philosophers openly preached and practised the doctrine of

suicide when one was tired of life. Our own early Church was full of

these broad and beautiful Greek ideas. You know that yourself! And it

was only when your miserable Jeromes and Augustines and Cyrils brought

in the abominable meannesses and cruelties of the Jewish Old Testament,

and stamped out the sane and lovely Greek elements in the Church,

that Christians became the poor, whining, cowardly egotists they are,

troubling about their little tin-pot souls, and scaring themselves in

their churches by skulls and crossbones.”

“My dear Celia,” interposed the priest, patting her shoulder gently, “we

will have no Greek debate today. Mr. Ware has been permitted to taboo

camp-meetings, and I claim the privilege to cry off on Greeks. Look at

those fellows down there, trampling over one another to get more beer.

What have they to do with Athens, or Athens with them? I take it, Mr.

Ware,” he went on, with a grave face but a twinkling eye, “that what we

are observing here in front of us is symbolical of a great ethical

and theological revolution, which in time will modify and control the

destiny of the entire American people. You see those young Irishmen

there, struggling like pigs at a trough to get their fill of German

beer. That signifies a conquest of Teuton over Kelt more important and

far-reaching in its results than the landing of Hengist and Horsa.

The Kelt has come to grief heretofore--or at least been forced to play

second fiddle to other races--because he lacked the right sort of a

drink. He has in his blood an excess of impulsive, imaginative, even

fantastic qualities. It is much easier for him to make a fool of

himself, to begin with, than it is for people of slower wits and more

sluggish temperaments. When you add whiskey to that, or that essence of

melancholia which in Ireland they call 'porther,' you get the Kelt at

his very weakest and worst. These young men down there are changing all

that. They have discovered lager. Already many of them can outdrink

the Germans at their own beverage. The lager-drinking Irishman in a few

generations will be a new type of humanity--the Kelt at his best. He

will dominate America. He will be THE American. And his church--with

the Italian element thrown clean out of it, and its Pope living, say, in

Baltimore or Georgetown--will be the Church of America.”

“Let us have some more lager at once,” put in Celia. “This revolution

can't be hurried forward too rapidly.”

Theron could not feel sure how much of the priest's discourse was in

jest, how much in earnest. “It seems to me,” he said, “that as things

are going, it doesn't look much as if the America of the future will

trouble itself about any kind of a church. The march of science must

very soon produce a universal scepticism. It is in the nature of human

progress. What all intelligent men recognize today, the masses must

surely come to see in time.”

Father Forbes laughed outright this time. “My dear Mr. Ware,” he said,

as they touched glasses again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been

brought them, “of all our fictions there is none so utterly baseless

and empty as this idea that humanity progresses. The savage's natural

impression is that the world he sees about him was made for him, and

that the rest of the universe is subordinated to him and his world, and

that all the spirits and demons and gods occupy themselves exclusively

with him and his affairs. That idea was the basis of every pagan

religion, and it is the basis of the Christian religion, simply because

it is the foundation of human nature. That foundation is just as firm

and unshaken today as it was in the Stone Age. It will always

remain, and upon it will always be built some kind of a religious

superstructure. 'Intelligent men,' as you call them, really have very

little influence, even when they all pull one way. The people as a whole

soon get tired of them. They give too much trouble. The most powerful

forces in human nature are self-protection and inertia. The middle-aged

man has found out that the chief wisdom in life is to bend to the

pressures about him, to shut up and do as others do. Even when he thinks

he has rid his own mind of superstitions, he sees that he will best

enjoy a peaceful life by leaving other peoples' superstitions alone.

That is always the ultimate view of the crowd.”

“But I don't see,” observed Theron, “granting that all this is true, how

you think the Catholic Church will come out on top. I could understand

it of Unitarianism, or Universalism, or the Episcopal Church, where

nobody seems to have to believe particularly in anything except the

beauty of its burial service, but I should think the very rigidity of

the Catholic creed would make it impossible. There everything is hard

and fast; nothing is elastic; there is no room for compromise.”

“The Church is always compromising,” explained the priest, “only it does

it so slowly that no one man lives long enough to quite catch it at the

trick. No; the great secret of the Catholic Church is that it doesn't

debate with sceptics. No matter what points you make against it, it

is never betrayed into answering back. It simply says these things are

sacred mysteries, which you are quite free to accept and be saved, or

reject and be damned. There is something intelligible and fine about

an attitude like that. When people have grown tired of their absurd and

fruitless wrangling over texts and creeds which, humanly speaking, are

all barbaric nonsense, they will come back to repose pleasantly under

the Catholic roof, in that restful house where things are taken for

granted. There the manners are charming, the service excellent, the

decoration and upholstery most acceptable to the eye, and the music”--he

made a little mock bow here to Celia--“the music at least is divine.

There you have nothing to do but be agreeable, and avoid scandal, and

observe the convenances. You are no more expected to express doubts

about the Immaculate Conception than you are to ask the lady whom you

take down to dinner how old she is. Now that is, as I have said,

an intelligent and rational church for people to have. As the Irish

civilize themselves--you observe them diligently engaged in the process

down below there--and the social roughness of their church becomes

softened and ameliorated, Americans will inevitably be attracted toward

it. In the end, it will embrace them all, and be modified by them, and

in turn influence their development, till you will have a new nation and

a new national church, each representative of the other.”

“And all this is to be done by lager beer!” Theron ventured to comment,

jokingly. He was conscious of a novel perspiration around the bridge of

his nose, which was obviously another effect of the drink.

The priest passed the pleasantry by. “No,” he said seriously; “what you

must see is that there must always be a church. If one did not exist, it

would be necessary to invent it. It is needed, first and foremost, as a

police force. It is needed, secondly, so to speak, as a fire insurance.

It provides the most even temperature and pure atmosphere for the growth

of young children. It furnishes the best obtainable social machinery for

marrying off one's daughters, getting to know the right people, patching

up quarrels, and so on. The priesthood earn their salaries as the agents

for these valuable social arrangements. Their theology is thrown in as

a sort of intellectual diversion, like the ritual of a benevolent

organization. There are some who get excited about this part of it, just

as one hears of Free-Masons who believe that the sun rises and sets to

exemplify their ceremonies. Others take their duties more quietly, and,

understanding just what it all amounts to, make the best of it, like you

and me.”

Theron assented to the philosophy and the compliment by a grave bow.

“Yes, that is the idea--to make the best of it,” he said, and fastened

his regard boldly this time upon the swings.

“We were both ordained by our bishops,” continued the priest, “at an

age when those worthy old gentlemen would not have trusted our combined

wisdom to buy a horse for them.”

“And I was married,” broke in Theron, with an eagerness almost vehement,

“when I had only just been ordained! At the worst, YOU had only the

Church fastened upon your back, before you were old enough to know

what you wanted. It is easy enough to make the best of THAT, but it is

different with me.”

A marked silence followed this outburst. The Rev. Mr. Ware had never

spoken of his marriage to either of these friends before; and something

in their manner seemed to suggest that they did not find the subject

inviting, now that it had been broached. He himself was filled with a

desire to say more about it. He had never clearly realized before what

a genuine grievance it was. The moisture at the top of his nose merged

itself into tears in the corners of his eyes, as the cruel enormity of

the sacrifice he had made in his youth rose before him. His whole life

had been fettered and darkened by it. He turned his gaze from the swings

toward Celia, to claim the sympathy he knew she would feel for him.

But Celia was otherwise engaged. A young man had come up to her--a tall

and extremely thin young man, soberly dressed, and with a long, gaunt,

hollow-eyed face, the skin of which seemed at once florid and pale. He

had sandy hair and the rough hands of a workman; but he was speaking to

Miss Madden in the confidential tones of an equal.

“I can do nothing at all with him,” this newcomer said to her. “He'll

not be said by me. Perhaps he'd listen to you!”

“It's likely I'll go down there!” said Celia. “He may do what he likes

for all me! Take my advice, Michael, and just go your way, and leave

him to himself. There was a time when I would have taken out my eyes

for him, but it was love wasted and thrown away. After the warnings he's

had, if he WILL bring trouble on himself, let's make it no affair of

ours.”

Theron had found himself exchanging glances of inquiry with this young

man. “Mr. Ware,” said Celia, here, “let me introduce you to my brother

Michael--my full brother.”

Mr. Ware remembered him now, and began, in response to the other's

formal bow, to say something about their having met in the dark, inside

the church. But Celia held up her hand. “I'm afraid, Mr. Ware,” she said

hurriedly, “that you are in for a glimpse of the family skeleton. I will

apologize for the infliction in advance.”

Wonderingly, Theron followed her look, and saw another young man who

had come up the path from the crowd below, and was close upon them. The

minister recognized in him a figure which had seemed to be the centre of

almost every group about the bar that he had studied in detail. He was

a small, dapper, elegantly attired youth, with dark hair, and the

handsome, regularly carved face of an actor. He advanced with a smiling

countenance and unsteady step--his silk hat thrust back upon his head,

his frock-coat and vest unbuttoned, and his neckwear disarranged--and

saluted the company with amiability.

“I saw you up here, Father Forbes,” he said, with a thickened and

erratic utterance. “Whyn't you come down and join us? I'm setting 'em up

for everybody. You got to take care of the boys, you know. I'll blow in

the last cent I've got in the world for the boys, every time, and they

know it. They're solider for me than they ever were for anybody. That's

how it is. If you stand by the boys, the boys'll stand by you. I'm going

to the Assembly for this district, and they ain't nobody can stop me.

The boys are just red hot for me. Wish you'd come down, Father Forbes,

and address a few words to the meeting--just mention that I'm a

candidate, and say I'm bound to win, hands down. That'll make you solid

with the boys, and we'll be all good fellows together. Come on down!”

The priest affably disengaged his arm from the clutch which the speaker

had laid upon it, and shook his head in gentle deprecation. “No, no; you

must excuse me, Theodore,” he said. “We mustn't meddle in politics, you

know.”

“Politics be damned!” urged Theodore, grabbing the priest's other arm,

and tugging at it stoutly to pull him down the path. “I say, boys” he

shouted to those below, “here's Father Forbes, and he's going to come

down and address the meeting. Come on, Father! Come down, and have a

drink with the boys!”

It was Celia who sharply pulled his hand away from the priest's arm

this time. “Go away with you!” she snapped in low, angry tones at the

intruder. “You should be ashamed of yourself! If you can't keep sober

yourself, you can at least keep your hands off the priest. I should

think you'd have more decency, when you're in such a state as this, than

to come where I am. If you've no respect for yourself, you might have

that much respect for me! And before strangers, too!

“Oh, I mustn't come where YOU are, eh?” remarked the peccant Theodore,

straightening himself with an elaborate effort. “You've bought these

woods, have you? I've got a hundred friends here, all the same, for

every one you'll ever have in your life, Red-head, and don't you forget

it.”

“Go and spend your money with them, then, and don't come insulting

decent people,” said Celia.

“Before strangers, too!” the young man called out, with beery sarcasm.

“Oh, we'll take care of the strangers all right.” He had not seemed to

be aware of Theron's presence, much less his identity, before; but he

turned to him now with a knowing grin. “I'm running for the Assembly,

Mr. Ware,” he said, speaking loudly and with deliberate effort to avoid

the drunken elisions and comminglings to which his speech tended, “and I

want you to fix up the Methodists solid for me. I'm going to drive over

to the camp-meeting tonight, me and some of the boys in a barouche, and

I'll put a twenty-dollar bill on their plate. Here it is now, if you

want to see it.”

As the young man began fumbling in a vest-pocket, Theron gathered his

wits together.

“You'd better not go this evening,” he said, as convincingly as he

knew how; “because the gates will be closed very early, and the

Saturday-evening services are of a particularly special nature, quite

reserved for those living on the grounds.”

“Rats!” said Theodore, raising his head, and abandoning the search for

the bill. “Why don't you speak out like a man, and say you think I'm too

drunk?”

“I don't think that is a question which need arise between us, Mr.

Madden,” murmured Theron, confusedly.

“Oh, don't you make any mistake! A hell of a lot of questions arise

between us, Mr. Ware,” cried Theodore, with a sudden accession of vigor

in tone and mien. “And one of 'em is--go away from me, Michael!--one of

'em is, I say, why don't you leave our girls alone? They've got their

own priests to make fools of themselves over, without any sneak of a

Protestant parson coming meddling round them. You're a married man into

the bargain; and you've got in your house this minute a piano that my

sister bought and paid for. Oh, I've seen the entry in Thurston's books!

You have the cheek to talk to me about being drunk--why--”

These remarks were never concluded, for Father Forbes here clapped a

hand abruptly over the offending mouth, and flung his free arm in a

tight grip around the young man's waist. “Come with me, Michael!” he

said, and the two men led the reluctant and resisting Theodore at a

sharp pace off into the woods.

Theron and Celia stood and watched them disappear among the undergrowth.

“It's the dirty Foley blood that's in him,” he heard her say, as if

between clenched teeth.

The girl's big brown eyes, when Theron looked into them again, were

still fixed upon the screen of foliage, and dilated like those of a

Medusa mask. The blood had gone away, and left the fair face and neck

as white, it seemed to him, as marble. Even her lips, fiercely bitten

together, appeared colorless. The picture of consuming and powerless

rage which she presented, and the shuddering tremor which ran over her

form, as visible as the quivering track of a gust of wind across a pond,

awed and frightened him.

Tenderness toward her helpless state came too, and uppermost. He drew

her arm into his, and turned their backs upon the picnic scene.

“Let us walk a little up the path into the woods,” he said, “and get

away from all this.”

“The further away the better,” she answered bitterly, and he felt the

shiver run through her again as she spoke.

The methodical waltz-music from that unseen dancing platform rose again

above all other sounds. They moved up the woodland path, their steps

insensibly falling into the rhythm of its strains, and vanished from

sight among the trees.

CHAPTER XXIV

Theron and Celia walked in silence for some minutes, until the noises

of the throng they had left behind were lost. The path they followed had

grown indefinite among the grass and creepers of the forest carpet;

now it seemed to end altogether in a little copse of young birches, the

delicately graceful stems of which were clustered about a parent stump,

long since decayed and overgrown with lichens and layers of thick moss.

As the two paused, the girl suddenly sank upon her knees, then threw

herself face forward upon the soft green bark which had formed itself

above the roots of the ancient mother-tree. Her companion looked down

in pained amazement at what he saw. Her body shook with the violence

of recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief Her hands, with

stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug into the moss and tangle of tiny

vines, and tore them by the roots. The half-stifled sounds of weeping

that arose from where her face grovelled in the leaves were terrible

to his ears. He knew not what to say or do, but gazed in resourceless

suspense at the strange figure she made. It seemed a cruelly long time

that she lay there, almost at his feet, struggling fiercely with the

fury that was in her.

All at once the paroxysms passed away, the sounds of wild weeping

ceased. Celia sat up, and with her handkerchief wiped the tears and

leafy fragments from her face. She rearranged her hat and the braids of

her hair with swift, instinctive touches, brushed the woodland debris

from her front, and sprang to her feet.

“I'm all right now,” she said briskly. There was palpable effort in her

light tone, and in the stormy sort of smile which she forced upon her

blotched and perturbed countenance, but they were only too welcome to

Theron's anxious mood.

“Thank God!” he blurted out, all radiant with relief. “I feared you were

going to have a fit--or something.”

Celia laughed, a little artificially at first, then with a genuine

surrender to the comic side of his visible fright. The mirth came back

into the brown depths of her eyes again, and her face cleared itself of

tear-stains and the marks of agitation. “I AM a nice quiet party for

a Methodist minister to go walking in the woods with, am I not?” she

cried, shaking her skirts and smiling at him.

“I am not a Methodist minister--please!” answered Theron--“at least not

today--and here--with you! I am just a man--nothing more--a man who has

escaped from lifelong imprisonment, and feels for the first time what it

is to be free!”

“Ah, my friend,” Celia said, shaking her head slowly, “I'm afraid you

deceive yourself. You are not by any means free. You are only looking

out of the window of your prison, as you call it. The doors are locked,

just the same.”

“I will smash them!” he declared, with confidence. “Or for that matter,

I HAVE smashed them--battered them to pieces. You don't realize what

progress I have made, what changes there have been in me since that

night, you remember that wonderful night! I am quite another being, I

assure you! And really it dates from way beyond that--why, from the very

first evening, when I came to you in the church. The window in Father

Forbes' room was open, and I stood by it listening to the music next

door, and I could just faintly see on the dark window across the

alley-way a stained-glass picture of a woman. I suppose it was the

Virgin Mary. She had hair like yours, and your face, too; and that is

why I went into the church and found you. Yes, that is why.”

Celia regarded him with gravity. “You will get yourself into great

trouble, my friend,” she said.

“That's where you're wrong,” put in Theron. “Not that I'd mind any

trouble in this wide world, so long as you called me 'my friend,' but

I'm not going to get into any at all. I know a trick worth two of that.

I've learned to be a showman. I can preach now far better than I used

to, and I can get through my work in half the time, and keep on the

right side of my people, and get along with perfect smoothness. I

was too green before. I took the thing seriously, and I let every

mean-fisted curmudgeon and crazy fanatic worry me, and keep me on pins

and needles. I don't do that any more. I've taken a new measure of life.

I see now what life is really worth, and I'm going to have my share of

it. Why should I deliberately deny myself all possible happiness for the

rest of my days, simply because I made a fool of myself when I was in my

teens? Other men are not eternally punished like that, for what they

did as boys, and I won't submit to it either. I will be as free to enjoy

myself as--as Father Forbes.”

Celia smiled softly, and shook her head again. “Poor man, to call HIM

free!” she said: “why, he is bound hand and foot. You don't in the least

realize how he is hedged about, the work he has to do, the thousand

suspicious eyes that watch his every movement, eager to bring the Bishop

down upon him. And then think of his sacrifice--the great sacrifice of

all--to never know what love means, to forswear his manhood, to live

a forlorn, celibate life--you have no idea how sadly that appeals to a

woman.”

“Let us sit down here for a little,” said Theron; “we seem at the end of

the path.” She seated herself on the root-based mound, and he reclined

at her side, with an arm carelessly extended behind her on the moss.

“I can see what you mean,” he went on, after a pause. “But to me, do you

know, there is an enormous fascination in celibacy. You forget that I

know the reverse of the medal. I know how the mind can be cramped, the

nerves harassed, the ambitions spoiled and rotted, the whole existence

darkened and belittled, by--by the other thing. I have never talked to

you before about my marriage.”

“I don't think we'd better talk about it now,” observed Celia. “There

must be many more amusing topics.”

He missed the spirit of her remark. “You are right,” he said slowly. “It

is too sad a thing to talk about. But there! it is my load, and I bear

it, and there's nothing more to be said.”

Theron drew a heavy sigh, and let his fingers toy abstractedly with a

ribbon on the outer edge of Celia's penumbra of apparel.

“No,” she said. “We mustn't snivel, and we mustn't sulk. When I get into

a rage it makes me ill, and I storm my way through it and tear things,

but it doesn't last long, and I come out of it feeling all the better.

I don't know that I've ever seen your wife. I suppose she hasn't got red

hair?”

“I think it's a kind of light brown,” answered Theron, with an effect of

exerting his memory.

“It seems that you only take notice of hair in stained-glass windows,”

was Celia's comment.

“Oh-h!” he murmured reproachfully, “as if--as if--but I won't say what I

was going to.”

“That's not fair!” she said. The little touch of whimsical mockery which

she gave to the serious declaration was delicious to him. “You have me

at such a disadvantage! Here am I rattling out whatever comes into my

head, exposing all my lightest emotions, and laying bare my very heart

in candor, and you meditate, you turn things over cautiously in your

mind, like a second Machiavelli. I grow afraid of you; you are so subtle

and mysterious in your reserves.”

Theron gave a tug at the ribbon, to show the joy he had in her delicate

chaff. “No, it is you who are secretive,” he said. “You never told me

about--about the piano.”

The word was out! A minute before it had seemed incredible to him that

he should ever have the courage to utter it--but here it was. He laid

firm hold upon the ribbon, which it appeared hung from her waist, and

drew himself a trifle nearer to her. “I could never have consented to

take it, I'm afraid,” he went on in a low voice, “if I had known. And

even as it is, I fear it won't be possible.”

“What are you afraid of?” asked Celia. “Why shouldn't you take it?

People in your profession never do get anything unless it's given to

them, do they? I've always understood it was like that. I've often

read of donation parties--that's what they're called, isn't it?--where

everybody is supposed to bring some gift to the minister. Very well,

then, I've simply had a donation party of my own, that's all. Unless

you mean that my being a Catholic makes a difference. I had supposed you

were quite free from that kind of prejudice.”

“So I am! Believe me, I am!” urged Theron. “When I'm with you, it seems

impossible to realize that there are people so narrow and contracted

in their natures as to take account of such things. It is another

atmosphere that I breathe near you. How could you imagine that such a

thought--about our difference of creed--would enter my head? In

fact,” he concluded with a nervous half-laugh, “there isn't any such

difference. Whatever your religion is, it's mine too. You remember--you

adopted me as a Greek.”

“Did I?” she rejoined. “Well, if that's the case, it leaves you without

a leg to stand on. I challenge you to find any instance where a Greek

made any difficulties about accepting a piano from a friend. But

seriously--while we are talking about it--you introduced the subject:

I didn't--I might as well explain to you that I had no such intention,

when I picked the instrument out. It was later, when I was talking to

Thurston's people about the price, that the whim seized me. Now it is

the one fixed rule of my life to obey my whims. Whatever occurs to me as

a possibly pleasant thing to do, straight like a hash, I go and do it.

It is the only way that a person with means, with plenty of money, can

preserve any freshness of character. If they stop to think what it would

be prudent to do, they get crusted over immediately. That is the curse

of rich people--they teach themselves to distrust and restrain every

impulse toward unusual actions. They get to feel that it is more

necessary for them to be cautious and conventional than it is for

others. I would rather work at a wash-tub than occupy that attitude

toward my bank account. I fight against any sign of it that I detect

rising in my mind. The instant a wish occurs to me, I rush to gratify

it. That is my theory of life. That accounts for the piano; and I don't

see that you've anything to say about it at all.”

It seemed very convincing, this theory of life. Somehow, the thought

of Miss Madden's riches had never before assumed prominence in Theron's

mind. Of course her father was very wealthy, but it had not occurred

to him that the daughter's emancipation might run to the length of a

personal fortune. He knew so little of rich people and their ways!

He lifted his head, and looked up at Celia with an awakened humility and

awe in his glance. The glamour of a separate banking-account shone upon

her. Where the soft woodland light played in among the strands of her

disordered hair, he saw the veritable gleam of gold. A mysterious new

suggestion of power blended itself with the beauty of her face, was

exhaled in the faint perfume of her garments. He maintained a timorous

hold upon the ribbon, wondering at his hardihood in touching it, or

being near her at all.

“What surprises me,” he heard himself saying, “is that you are

contented to stay in Octavius. I should think that you would travel--go

abroad--see the beautiful things of the world, surround yourself with

the luxuries of big cities--and that sort of thing.”

Celia regarded the forest prospect straight in front of her with

a pensive gaze. “Sometime--no doubt I will sometime,” she said

abstractedly.

“One reads so much nowadays,” he went on, “of American heiresses going

to Europe and marrying dukes and noblemen. I suppose you will do that

too. Princes would fight one another for you.”

The least touch of a smile softened for an instant the impassivity of

her countenance. Then she stared harder than ever at the vague, leafy

distance. “That is the old-fashioned idea,” she said, in a musing tone,

“that women must belong to somebody, as if they were curios, or statues,

or race-horses. You don't understand, my friend, that I have a different

view. I am myself, and I belong to myself, exactly as much as any man.

The notion that any other human being could conceivably obtain the

slightest property rights in me is as preposterous, as ridiculous,

as--what shall I say?--as the notion of your being taken out with a

chain on your neck and sold by auction as a slave, down on the canal

bridge. I should be ashamed to be alive for another day, if any other

thought were possible to me.”

“That is not the generally accepted view, I should think,” faltered

Theron.

“No more is it the accepted view that young married Methodist ministers

should sit out alone in the woods with red-headed Irish girls. No, my

friend, let us find what the generally accepted views are, and as fast

as we find them set our heels on them. There is no other way to live

like real human beings. What on earth is it to me that other women crawl

about on all-fours, and fawn like dogs on any hand that will buckle

a collar onto them, and toss them the leavings of the table? I am not

related to them. I have nothing to do with them. They cannot make any

rules for me. If pride and dignity and independence are dead in them,

why, so much the worse for them! It is no affair of mine. Certainly it

is no reason why I should get down and grovel also. No; I at least stand

erect on my legs.”

Mr. Ware sat up, and stared confusedly, with round eyes and parted lips,

at his companion. Instinctively his brain dragged forth to the surface

those epithets which the doctor had hurled in bitter contempt at

her--“mad ass, a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed

lewdness.” The words rose in their order on his memory, hard and

sharp-edged, like arrow-heads. But to sit there, quite at her side; to

breathe the same air, and behold the calm loveliness of her profile; to

touch the ribbon of her dress--and all the while to hold these poisoned

darts of abuse levelled in thought at her breast--it was monstrous. He

could have killed the doctor at that moment. With an effort, he drove

the foul things from his mind--scattered them back into the darkness.

He felt that he had grown pale, and wondered if she had heard the groan

that seemed to have been forced from him in the struggle. Or was the

groan imaginary?

Celia continued to sit unmoved, composedly looking upon vacancy.

Theron's eyes searched her face in vain for any sign of consciousness

that she had astounded and bewildered him. She did not seem to be

thinking of him at all. The proud calm of her thoughtful countenance

suggested instead occupation with lofty and remote abstractions and

noble ideals. Contemplating her, he suddenly perceived that what she had

been saying was great, wonderful, magnificent. An involuntary thrill ran

through his veins at recollection of her words. His fancy likened it to

the sensation he used to feel as a youth, when the Fourth of July reader

bawled forth that opening clause: “When, in the course of human events,

it becomes necessary,” etc. It was nothing less than another Declaration

of Independence he had been listening to.

He sank again recumbent at her side, and stretched the arm behind her,

nearer than before. “Apparently, then, you will never marry.” His voice

trembled a little.

“Most certainly not!” said Celia.

“You spoke so feelingly a little while ago,” he ventured along, with

hesitation, “about how sadly the notion of a priest's sacrificing

himself--never knowing what love meant--appealed to a woman. I should

think that the idea of sacrificing herself would seem to her even sadder

still.”

“I don't remember that we mentioned THAT,” she replied. “How do you

mean--sacrificing herself?”

Theron gathered some of the outlying folds of her dress in his hand, and

boldly patted and caressed them. “You, so beautiful and so free, with

such fine talents and abilities,” he murmured; “you, who could have the

whole world at your feet--are you, too, never going to know what love

means? Do you call that no sacrifice? To me it is the most terrible that

my imagination can conceive.”

Celia laughed--a gentle, amused little laugh, in which Theron's ears

traced elements of tenderness. “You must regulate that imagination of

yours,” she said playfully. “It conceives the thing that is not. Pray,

when”--and here, turning her head, she bent down upon his face a gaze of

arch mock-seriousness--“pray, when did I describe myself in these terms?

When did I say that I should never know what love meant?”

For answer Theron laid his head down upon his arm, and closed his

eyes, and held his face against the draperies encircling her. “I cannot

think!” he groaned.

The thing that came uppermost in his mind, as it swayed and rocked in

the tempest of emotion, was the strange reminiscence of early childhood

in it all. It was like being a little boy again, nestling in an

innocent, unthinking transport of affection against his mother's skirts.

The tears he felt scalding his eyes were the spontaneous, unashamed

tears of a child; the tremulous and exquisite joy which spread,

wave-like, over him, at once reposeful and yearning, was full of

infantile purity and sweetness. He had not comprehended at all before

what wellsprings of spiritual beauty, what limpid depths of idealism,

his nature contained.

“We were speaking of our respective religions,” he heard Celia say, as

imperturbably as if there had been no digression worth mentioning.

“Yes,” he assented, and moved his head so that he looked up at her back

hair, and the leaves high above, mottled against the sky. The wish

to lie there, where now he could just catch the rose-leaf line of her

under-chin as well, was very strong upon him. “Yes?” he repeated.

“I cannot talk to you like that,” she said; and he sat up again

shamefacedly.

“Yes--I think we were speaking of religions--some time ago,” he

faltered, to relieve the situation. The dreadful thought that she might

be annoyed began to oppress him.

“Well, you said whatever my religion was, it was yours too. That

entitles you at least to be told what the religion is. Now, I am a

Catholic.”

Theron, much mystified, nodded his head. Could it be possible--was there

coming a deliberate suggestion that he should become a convert? “Yes--I

know,” he murmured.

“But I should explain that I am only a Catholic in the sense that its

symbolism is pleasant to me. You remember what Schopenhauer said--you

cannot have the water by itself: you must also have the jug that it is

in. Very well; the Catholic religion is my jug. I put into it the things

I like. They were all there long ago, thousands of years ago. The Jews

threw them out; we will put them back again. We will restore art and

poetry and the love of beauty, and the gentle, spiritual, soulful life.

The Greeks had it; and Christianity would have had it too, if it hadn't

been for those brutes they call the Fathers. They loved ugliness and

dirt and the thought of hell-fire. They hated women. In all the earlier

stages of the Church, women were very prominent in it. Jesus himself

appreciated women, and delighted to have them about him, and talk with

them and listen to them. That was the very essence of the Greek spirit;

and it breathed into Christianity at its birth a sweetness and a grace

which twenty generations of cranks and savages like Paul and Jerome

and Tertullian weren't able to extinguish. But the very man, Cyril, who

killed Hypatia, and thus began the dark ages, unwittingly did another

thing which makes one almost forgive him. To please the Egyptians, he

secured the Church's acceptance of the adoration of the Virgin. It is

that idea which has kept the Greek spirit alive, and grown and grown,

till at last it will rule the world. It was only epileptic Jews who

could imagine a religion without sex in it.”

“I remember the pictures of the Virgin in your room,” said Theron,

feeling more himself again. “I wondered if they quite went with the

statues.”

The remark won a smile from Celia's lips.

“They get along together better than you suppose,” she answered.

“Besides, they are not all pictures of Mary. One of them, standing on

the moon, is of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms. Another might as

well be Mahamie, bearing the miraculously born Buddha, or Olympias with

her child Alexander, or even Perictione holding her babe Plato--all

these were similar cases, you know. Almost every religion had its

Immaculate Conception. What does it all come to, except to show us that

man turns naturally toward the worship of the maternal idea? That is the

deepest of all our instincts--love of woman, who is at once daughter and

wife and mother. It is that that makes the world go round.”

Brave thoughts shaped themselves in Theron's mind, and shone forth in a

confident yet wistful smile on his face.

“It is a pity you cannot change estates with me for one minute,” he

said, in steady, low tone. “Then you would realize the tremendous truth

of what you have been saying. It is only your intellect that has reached

out and grasped the idea. If you were in my place, you would discover

that your heart was bursting with it as well.”

Celia turned and looked at him.

“I myself,” he went on, “would not have known, half an hour ago, what

you meant by the worship of the maternal idea. I am much older than

you. I am a strong, mature man. But when I lay down there, and shut my

eyes--because the charm and marvel of this whole experience had for

the moment overcome me--the strangest sensation seized upon me. It was

absolutely as if I were a boy again, a good, pure-minded, fond little

child, and you were the mother that I idolized.”

Celia had not taken her eyes from his face. “I find myself liking you

better at this moment,” she said, with gravity, “than I have ever liked

you before.”

Then, as by a sudden impulse, she sprang to her feet. “Come!” she cried,

her voice and manner all vivacity once more, “we have been here long

enough.”

Upon the instant, as Theron was more laboriously getting up, it became

apparent to them both that perhaps they had been there too long.

A boy with a gun under his arm, and two gray squirrels tied by the tails

slung across his shoulder, stood at the entrance to the glade, some

dozen paces away, regarding them with undisguised interest. Upon the

discovery that he was in turn observed, he resumed his interrupted

progress through the woods, whistling softly as he went, and vanished

among the trees.

“Heavens above!” groaned Theron, shudderingly.

“Know him?” he went on, in answer to the glance of inquiry on his

companion's face. “I should think I did! He spades my--my wife's garden

for her. He used to bring our milk. He works in the law office of one

of my trustees--the one who isn't friendly to me, but is very friendly

indeed with my--with Mrs. Ware. Oh, what shall I do? It may easily mean

my ruin!”

Celia looked at him attentively. The color had gone out of his face, and

with it the effect of earnestness and mental elevation which, a minute

before, had caught her fancy. “Somehow, I fear that I do not like you

quite so much just now, my friend,” she remarked.

“In God's name, don't say that!” urged Theron. He raised his voice in

agitated entreaty. “You don't know what these people are--how they would

leap at the barest hint of a scandal about me. In my position I am a

thousand times more defenceless than any woman. Just a single whisper,

and I am done for!”

“Let me point out to you, Mr. Ware,” said Celia, slowly, “that to be

seen sitting and talking with me, whatever doubts it may raise as to

a gentleman's intellectual condition, need not necessarily blast his

social reputation beyond all hope whatever.”

Theron stared at her, as if he had not grasped her meaning. Then he

winced visibly under it, and put out his hands to implore her. “Forgive

me! Forgive me!” he pleaded. “I was beside myself for the moment with

the fright of the thing. Oh, say you do forgive me, Celia!” He made

haste to support this daring use of her name. “I have been so happy

today--so deeply, so vastly happy--like the little child I spoke of--and

that is so new in my lonely life--that--the suddenness of the thing--it

just for the instant unstrung me. Don't be too hard on me for it! And

I had hoped, too--I had had such genuine heartfelt pleasure in the

thought--that, an hour or two ago, when you were unhappy, perhaps it had

been some sort of consolation to you that I was with you.”

Celia was looking away. When he took her hand she did not withdraw it,

but turned and nodded in musing general assent to what he had said.

“Yes, we have both been unstrung, as you call it, today,” she said,

decidedly out of pitch. “Let each forgive the other, and say no more

about it.”

She took his arm, and they retraced their steps along the path, again

in silence. The labored noise of the orchestra, as it were, returned to

meet them. They halted at an intersecting footpath.

“I go back to my slavery--my double bondage,” said Theron, letting his

voice sink to a sigh. “But even if I am put on the rack for it, I shall

have had one day of glory.”

“I think you may kiss me, in memory of that one day--or of a few minutes

in that day,” said Celia.

Their lips brushed each other in a swift, almost perfunctory caress.

Theron went his way at a hurried pace, the sobered tones of her

“good-bye” beating upon his brain with every measure of the droning

waltz-music.

PART IV

CHAPTER XXV

The memory of the kiss abode with Theron. Like Aaron's rod, it swallowed

up one by one all competing thoughts and recollections, and made his

brain its slave.

Even as he strode back through the woods to the camp-meeting, it was the

kiss that kept his feet in motion, and guided their automatic course.

All along the watches of the restless night, it was the kiss that bore

him sweet company, and wandered with him from one broken dream of bliss

to another. Next day, it was the kiss that made of life for him a sort

of sunlit wonderland. He preached his sermon in the morning, and took

his appointed part in the other services of afternoon and evening,

apparently to everybody's satisfaction: to him it was all a vision.

When the beautiful full moon rose, this Sunday evening, and glorified

the clearing and the forest with its mellow harvest radiance, he could

have groaned with the burden of his joy. He went out alone into the

light, and bared his head to it, and stood motionless for a long time.

In all his life, he had never been impelled as powerfully toward earnest

and soulful thanksgiving. The impulse to kneel, there in the pure,

tender moonlight, and lift up offerings of praise to God, kept uppermost

in his mind. Some formless resignation restrained him from the act

itself, but the spirit of it hallowed his mood. He gazed up at the broad

luminous face of the satellite. “You are our God,” he murmured. “Hers

and mine! You are the most beautiful of heavenly creatures, as she is of

the angels on earth. I am speechless with reverence for you both.”

It was not until the camp-meeting broke up, four days later, and Theron

with the rest returned to town, that the material aspects of what had

happened, and might be expected to happen, forced themselves upon his

mind. The kiss was a child of the forest. So long as Theron remained in

the camp, the image of the kiss, which was enshrined in his heart and

ministered to by all his thoughts, continued enveloped in a haze of

sylvan mystery, like a dryad. Suggestions of its beauty and holiness

came to him in the odors of the woodland, at the sight of wild flowers

and water-lilies. When he walked alone in unfamiliar parts of the

forest, he carried about with him the half-conscious idea of somewhere

coming upon a strange, hidden pool which mortal eye had not seen

before--a deep, sequestered mere of spring-fed waters, walled in by

rich, tangled growths of verdure, and bearing upon its virgin bosom only

the shadows of the primeval wilderness, and the light of the eternal

skies. His fancy dwelt upon some such nook as the enchanted home of

the fairy that possessed his soul. The place, though he never found it,

became real to him. As he pictured it, there rose sometimes from among

the lily-pads, stirring the translucent depths and fluttering over the

water's surface drops like gems, the wonderful form of a woman, with

pale leaves wreathed in her luxuriant red hair, and a skin which gave

forth light.

With the homecoming to Octavius, his dreams began to take more account

of realities. In a day or two he was wide awake, and thinking hard. The

kiss was as much as ever the ceaseless companion of his hours, but it no

longer insisted upon shrouding itself in vines and woodland creepers, or

outlining itself in phosphorescent vagueness against mystic backgrounds

of nymph-haunted glades. It advanced out into the noonday, and assumed

tangible dimensions and substance. He saw that it was related to the

facts of his daily life, and had, in turn, altered his own relations to

all these facts.

What ought he to do? What COULD he do? Apparently, nothing but wait.

He waited for a week--then for another week. The conclusion that the

initiative had been left to him began to take shape in his mind. From

this it seemed but a step to the passionate resolve to act at once.

Turning the situation over and over in his anxious thoughts, two things

stood out in special prominence. One was that Celia loved him. The other

was that the boy in Gorringe's law office, and possibly Gorringe, and

heaven only knew how many others besides, had reasons for suspecting

this to be true.

And what about Celia? Side by side with the moving rapture of thinking

about her as a woman, there rose the substantial satisfaction of

contemplating her as Miss Madden. She had kissed him, and she was very

rich. The things gradually linked themselves before his eyes. He tried

a thousand varying guesses at what she proposed to do, and each time

reined up his imagination by the reminder that she was confessedly a

creature of whims, who proposed to do nothing, but was capable of all

things.

And as to the boy. If he had blabbed what he saw, it was incredible that

somebody should not take the subject up, and impart a scandalous twist

to it, and send it rolling like a snowball to gather up exaggeration and

foul innuendo till it was big enough to overwhelm him. What would happen

to him if a formal charge were preferred against him? He looked it up

in the Discipline. Of course, if his accusers magnified their mean

suspicions and calumnious imaginings to the point of formulating a

charge, it would be one of immorality. They could prove nothing; there

was nothing to prove. At the worst, it was an indiscretion, which would

involve his being admonished by his Presiding Elder. Or if these narrow

bigots confused slanders with proofs, and showed that they intended to

convict him, then it would be open to him to withdraw from the ministry,

in advance of his condemnation. His relation to the church would be

the same as if he had been expelled, but to the outer world it would be

different. And supposing he did withdraw from the ministry?

Yes; this was the important point. What if he did abandon this mistaken

profession of his? On its mental side the relief would be prodigious,

unthinkable. But on the practical side, the bread-and-butter side? For

some days Theron paused with a shudder when he reached this question.

The thought of the plunge into unknown material responsibilities gave

him a sinking heart. He tried to imagine himself lecturing, canvassing

for books or insurance policies, writing for newspapers--and remained

frightened. But suddenly one day it occurred to him that these qualms

and forebodings were sheer folly. Was not Celia rich? Would she not with

lightning swiftness draw forth that check-book, like the flashing sword

of a champion from its scabbard, and run to his relief? Why, of course.

It was absurd not to have thought of that before.

He recalled her momentary anger with him, that afternoon in the woods,

when he had cried out that discovery would mean ruin to him. He saw

clearly enough now that she had been grieved at his want of faith in her

protection. In his flurry of fright, he had lost sight of the fact that,

if exposure and trouble came to him, she would naturally feel that she

had been the cause of his martyrdom. It was plain enough now. If he got

into hot water, it would be solely on account of his having been seen

with her. He had walked into the woods with her--“the further the

better” had been her own words--out of pure kindliness, and the

desire to lead her away from the scene of her brother's and her own

humiliation. But why amplify arguments? Her own warm heart would tell

her, on the instant, how he had been sacrificed for her sake, and would

bring her, eager and devoted, to his succor.

That was all right, then. Slowly, from this point, suggestions expanded

themselves. The future could be, if he willed it, one long serene

triumph of love, and lofty intellectual companionship, and existence

softened and enriched at every point by all that wealth could command,

and the most exquisite tastes suggest. Should he will it! Ah! the

question answered itself. But he could not enter upon this beckoning

heaven of a future until he had freed himself. When Celia said to him,

“Come!” he must not be in the position to reply, “I should like to, but

unfortunately I am tied by the leg.” He should have to leave Octavius,

leave the ministry, leave everything. He could not begin too soon to

face these contingencies.

Very likely Celia had not thought it out as far as this. With her,

it was a mere vague “sometime I may.” But the harder masculine sense,

Theron felt, existed for the very purpose of correcting and giving point

to these loose feminine notions of time and space. It was for him to

clear away the obstacles, and map the plans out with definite decision.

One warm afternoon, as he lolled in his easy-chair under the open

window of his study, musing upon the ever-shifting phases of this vast,

complicated, urgent problem, some chance words from the sidewalk in

front came to his ears, and, coming, remained to clarify his thoughts.

Two ladies whose voices were strange to him had stopped--as so many

people almost daily stopped--to admire the garden of the parsonage. One

of them expressed her pleasure in general terms. Said the other--

“My husband declares those dahlias alone couldn't be matched for thirty

dollars, and that some of those gladiolus must have cost three or four

dollars apiece. I know we've spent simply oceans of money on our garden,

and it doesn't begin to compare with this.”

“It seems like a sinful waste to me,” said her companion.

“No-o,” the other hesitated. “No, I don't think quite that--if you can

afford it just as well as not. But it does seem to me that I'd rather

live in a little better house, and not spend it ALL on flowers. Just

LOOK at that cactus!”

The voices died away. Theron sat up, with a look of arrested thought

upon his face, then sprang to his feet and moved hurriedly through the

parlor to an open front window. Peering out with caution he saw that the

two women receding from view were fashionably dressed and evidently

came from homes of means. He stared after them in a blank way until they

turned a corner.

He went into the hall then, put on his frock-coat and hat, and stepped

out into the garden. He was conscious of having rather avoided it

heretofore--not altogether without reasons of his own, lying unexamined

somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Now he walked slowly about, and

examined the flowers with great attentiveness. The season was

advancing, and he saw that many plants had gone out of bloom. But what a

magnificent plenitude of blossoms still remained!

Thirty dollars' worth of dahlias--that was what the stranger had said.

Theron hardly brought himself to credit the statement; but all the same

it was apparent to even his uninformed eye that these huge, imbricated,

flowering masses, with their extraordinary half-colors, must be unusual.

He remembered that the boy in Gorringe's office had spoken of just one

lot of plants costing thirty-one dollars and sixty cents, and there had

been two other lots as well. The figures remained surprisingly distinct

in his memory. It was no good deceiving himself any longer: of course

these were the plants that Gorringe had spent his money upon, here all

about him.

As he surveyed them with a sour regard, a cool breeze stirred across the

garden. The tall, over-laden flower-spikes of gladioli bent and nodded

at him; the hollyhocks and flaming alvias, the clustered blossoms on the

standard roses, the delicately painted lilies on their stilt-like stems,

fluttered in the wind, and seemed all bowing satirically to him. “Yes,

Levi Gorringe paid for us!” He almost heard their mocking declaration.

Out in the back-yard, where a longer day of sunshine dwelt, there were

many other flowers, and notably a bed of geraniums which literally made

the eye ache. Standing at this rear corner of the house, he caught the

droning sound of Alice's voice, humming a hymn to herself as she went

about her kitchen work. He saw her through the open window. She was

sweeping, and had a sort of cap on her head which did not add to the

graces of her appearance. He looked at her with a hard glance, recalling

as a fresh grievance the ten days of intolerable boredom he had spent

cooped up in a ridiculous little tent with her, at the camp-meeting. She

must have realized at the time how odious the enforced companionship was

to him. Yes, beyond doubt she did. It came back to him now that they

had spoken but rarely to each other. She had not even praised his sermon

upon the Sabbath-question, which every one else had been in raptures

over. For that matter she no longer praised anything he did, and took

obvious pains to preserve toward him a distant demeanor. So much the

better, he felt himself thinking. If she chose to behave in that

offish and unwifely fashion, she could blame no one but herself for its

results.

She had seen him, and came now to the window, watering-pot and broom

in hand. She put her head out, to breathe a breath of dustless air, and

began as if she would smile on him. Then her face chilled and stiffened,

as she caught his look.

“Shall you be home for supper?” she asked, in her iciest tone.

He had not thought of going out before. The question, and the manner of

it, gave immediate urgency to the idea of going somewhere. “I may or I

may not,” he replied. “It is quite impossible for me to say.” He turned

on his heel with this, and walked briskly out of the yard and down the

street.

It was the most natural thing that presently he should be strolling past

the Madden house, and letting a covert glance stray over its front and

the grounds about it, as he loitered along. Every day since his return

from the woods he had given the fates this chance of bringing Celia

to meet him, without avail. He had hung about in the vicinity of the

Catholic church on several evenings as well, but to no purpose. The

organ inside was dumb, and he could detect no signs of Celia's presence

on the curtains of the pastorate next door. This day, too, there was

no one visible at the home of the Maddens, and he walked on, a little

sadly. It was weary work waiting for the signal that never came.

But there were compensations. His mind reverted doggedly to the flowers

in his garden, and to Alice's behavior toward him. They insisted upon

connecting themselves in his thoughts. Why should Levi Gorringe, a

money-lender, and therefore the last man in the world to incur reckless

expenditure, go and buy perhaps a hundred dollars, worth of flowers for

his wife's garden? It was time--high time--to face this question. And

his experiencing religion afterward, just when Alice did, and marching

down to the rail to kneel beside her--that was a thing to be thought of,

too.

Meditation, it is true, hardly threw fresh light upon the matter. It

was incredible, of course, that there should be anything wrong. To even

shape a thought of Alice in connection with gallantry would be wholly

impossible. Nor could it be said that Gorringe, in his new capacity as a

professing church-member, had disclosed any sign of ulterior motives,

or of insincerity. Yet there the facts were. While Theron pondered them,

their mystery, if they involved a mystery, baffled him altogether.

But when he had finished, he found himself all the same convinced that

neither Alice nor Gorringe would be free to blame him for anything

he might do. He had grounds for complaint against them. If he did not

himself know just what these grounds were, it was certain enough that

THEY knew. Very well, then, let them take the responsibility for what

happened.

It was indeed awkward that at the moment, as Theron chanced to emerge

temporarily from his brown-study, his eyes fell full upon the spare,

well-knit form of Levi Gorringe himself, standing only a few feet away,

in the staircase entrance to his law office. His lean face, browned by

the summer's exposure, had a more Arabian aspect than ever. His hands

were in his pockets, and he held an unlighted cigar between his teeth.

He looked the Rev. Mr. Ware over calmly, and nodded recognition.

Theron had halted instinctively. On the instant he would have given

a great deal not to have stopped at all. It was stupid of him to have

paused, but it would not do now to go on without words of some sort. He

moved over to the door-way, and made a half-hearted pretence of looking

at the photographs in one of the show-cases at its side. As Mr. Gorringe

did not take his hands from his pockets, there was no occasion for any

formal greeting.

“I had no idea that they took such good pictures in Octavius,” Theron

remarked after a minute's silence, still bending in examination of the

photographs.

“They ought to; they charge New York prices,” observed the lawyer,

sententiously.

Theron found in the words confirmation of his feeling that Gorringe was

not naturally a lavish or extravagant man. Rather was he a careful and

calculating man, who spent money only for a purpose. Though the minister

continued gazing at the stiff presentments of local beauties and

swains, his eyes seemed to see salmon-hued hollyhocks and spotted lilies

instead. Suddenly a resolve came to him. He stood erect, and faced his

trustee.

“Speaking of the price of things,” he said, with an effort of arrogance

in his measured tone, “I have never had an opportunity before of

mentioning the subject of the flowers you have so kindly furnished for

my--for MY garden.”

“Why mention it now?” queried Gorringe, with nonchalance. He turned his

cigar about with a movement of his lips, and worked it into the corner

of his mouth. He did not find it necessary to look at Theron at all.

“Because--” began Mr. Ware, and then hesitated--“because--well, it

raises a question of my being under obligation, which I--”

“Oh, no, sir,” said the lawyer; “put that out of your mind. You are no

more under obligation to me than I am to you. Oh, no, make yourself easy

about that. Neither of us owes the other anything.”

“Not even good-will--I take that to be your meaning,” retorted Theron,

with some heat.

“The words are yours, sir,” responded Gorringe, coolly. “I do not object

to them.”

“As you like,” put in the other. “If it be so, why, then all the more

reason why I should, under the circumstances--”

“Under what circumstances?” interposed the lawyer. “Let us be clear

about this thing as we go along. To what circumstances do you refer?”

He had turned his eyes now, and looked Theron in the face. A slight

protrusion of his lower jaw had given the cigar an upward tilt under the

black mustache.

“The circumstances are that you have brought or sent to my garden a

great many very expensive flower-plants and bushes and so on.”

“And you object? I had not supposed that clergymen in general--and you

in particular--were so sensitive. Have donation parties, then, gone out

of date?”

“I understand your sneer well enough,” retorted Theron, “but that

can pass. The main point is, that you did me the honor to send these

plants--or to smuggle them in--but never once deigned to hint to me that

you had done so. No one told me. Except by mere accident, I should not

have known to this day where they came from.”

Mr. Gorringe twisted the cigar at another angle, with lines of grim

amusement about the corner of his mouth. “I should have thought,” he

said with dry deliberation, “that possibly this fact might have raised

in your mind the conceivable hypothesis that the plants might not be

intended for you at all.”

“That is precisely it, sir,” said Theron. There were people passing, and

he was forced to keep his voice down. It would have been a relief, he

felt, to shout. “That is it--they were not intended for me.”

“Well, then, what are you talking about?” The lawyer's speech had become

abrupt almost to incivility.

“I think my remarks have been perfectly clear,” said the minister, with

dignity. It was a new experience to be addressed in that fashion.

It occurred to him to add, “Please remember that I am not in the

witness-box, to be bullied or insulted by a professional.”

Gorringe studied Theron's face attentively with a cold, searching

scrutiny. “You may thank your stars you're not!” he said, with

significance.

What on earth could he mean? The words and the menacing tone greatly

impressed Theron. Indeed, upon reflection, he found that they frightened

him. The disposition to adopt a high tone with the lawyer was melting

away.

“I do not see,” he began, and then deliberately allowed his voice to

take on an injured and plaintive inflection--“I do not see why you

should adopt this tone toward me--Brother Gorringe.”

The lawyer scowled, and bit sharply into the cigar, but said nothing.

“If I have unconsciously offended you in any way,” Theron went on, “I

beg you to tell me how. I liked you from the beginning of my pastorate

here, and the thought that latterly we seemed to be drifting apart has

given me much pain. But now it is still more distressing to find you

actually disposed to quarrel with me. Surely, Brother Gorringe, between

a pastor and a probationer who--”

“No,” Gorringe broke in; “quarrel isn't the word for it. There isn't any

quarrel, Mr. Ware.” He stepped down from the door-stone to the sidewalk

as he spoke, and stood face to face with Theron. Working-men with

dinner-pails, and factory girls, were passing close to them, and he

lowered his voice to a sharp, incisive half-whisper as he added, “It

wouldn't be worth any grown man's while to quarrel with so poor a

creature as you are.”

Theron stood confounded, with an empty stare of bewilderment on his

face. It rose in his mind that the right thing to feel was rage,

righteous indignation, fury; but for the life of him, he could not

muster any manly anger. The character of the insult stupefied him.

“I do not know that I have anything to say to you in reply,” he

remarked, after what seemed to him a silence of minutes. His lips

framed the words automatically, but they expressed well enough the blank

vacancy of his mind. The suggestion that anybody deemed him a “poor

creature” grew more astounding, incomprehensible, as it swelled in his

brain.

“No, I suppose not,” snapped Gorringe. “You're not the sort to stand up

to men; your form is to go round the corner and take it out of somebody

weaker than yourself--a defenceless woman, for instance.”

“Oh--ho!” said Theron. The exclamation had uttered itself. The sound of

it seemed to clarify his muddled thoughts; and as they ranged themselves

in order, he began to understand. “Oh--ho!” he said again, and nodded

his head in token of comprehension.

The lawyer, chewing his cigar with increased activity, glared at him.

“What do you mean?” he demanded peremptorily.

“Mean?” said the minister. “Oh, nothing that I feel called upon to

explain to you.”

It was passing strange, but his self-possession had all at once returned

to him. As it became more apparent that the lawyer was losing his

temper, Theron found the courage to turn up the corners of his lips in

show of a bitter little smile of confidence. He looked into the other's

dusky face, and flaunted this smile at it in contemptuous defiance. “It

is not a subject that I can discuss with propriety--at this stage,” he

added.

“Damn you! Are you talking about those flowers?”

“Oh, I am not talking about anything in particular,” returned Theron,

“not even the curious choice of language which my latest probationer

seems to prefer.”

“Go and strike my name off the list!” said Gorringe, with rising

passion. “I was a fool to ever have it there. To think of being a

probationer of yours--my God!”

“That will be a pity--from one point of view,” remarked Theron, still

with the ironical smile on his lips. “You seemed to enter upon the new

life with such deliberation and fixity of purpose, too! I can imagine

the regrets your withdrawal will cause, in certain quarters. I only hope

that it will not discourage those who accompanied you to the altar,

and shared your enthusiasm at the time.” He had spoken throughout with

studied slowness and an insolent nicety of utterance.

“You had better go away!” broke forth Gorringe. “If you don't, I shall

forget myself.”

“For the first time?” asked Theron. Then, warned by the flash in the

lawyer's eye, he turned on his heel and sauntered, with a painstaking

assumption of a mind quite at ease, up the street.

Gorringe's own face twitched and his veins tingled as he looked after

him. He spat the shapeless cigar out of his mouth into the gutter, and,

drawing forth another from his pocket, clenched it between his teeth,

his gaze following the tall form of the Methodist minister till it was

merged in the crowd.

“Well, I'm damned!” he said aloud to himself.

The photographer had come down to take in his showcases for the night.

He looked up from his task at the exclamation, and grinned inquiringly.

“I've just been talking to a man,” said the lawyer, “who's so much

meaner than any other man I ever heard of that it takes my breath away.

He's got a wife that's as pure and good as gold, and he knows it, and

she worships the ground he walks on, and he knows that too. And yet the

scoundrel is around trying to sniff out some shadow of a pretext for

misusing her worse than he's already done. Yes, sir; he'd be actually

tickled to death if he could nose up some hint of a scandal about

her--something that he could pretend to believe, and work for his own

advantage to levy blackmail, or get rid of her, or whatever suited his

book. I didn't think there was such an out-and-out cur on this whole

footstool. I almost wish, by God, I'd thrown him into the canal!”

“Yes, you lawyers must run against some pretty snide specimens,”

remarked the photographer, lifting one of the cases from its sockets.

CHAPTER XXVI

Theron spent half an hour in aimless strolling about the streets. From

earliest boyhood his mind had always worked most clearly when he walked

alone. Every mental process which had left a mark upon his memory and

his career--the daydreams of future academic greatness and fame which

had fashioned themselves in his brain as a farm lad; the meditations,

raptures, and high resolves of his student period at the seminary; the

more notable sermons and powerful discourse by which he had revealed the

genius that was in him to astonished and delighted assemblages--all were

associated in his retrospective thoughts with solitary rambles.

He had a very direct and vivid consciousness now that it was good to be

on his legs, and alone. He had never in his life been more sensible of

the charm of his own companionship. The encounter with Gorringe seemed

to have cleared all the clouds out of his brain, and restored lightness

to his heart. After such an object lesson, the impossibility of his

continuing to sacrifice himself to a notion of duty to these low-minded

and coarse-natured villagers was beyond all argument. There could no

longer be any doubt about his moral right to turn his back upon them, to

wash his hands of the miserable combination of hypocrisy and hysterics

which they called their spiritual life.

And the question of Gorringe and Alice, that too stood precisely where

he wanted it. Even in his own thoughts, he preferred to pursue it no

further. Between them somewhere an offence of concealment, it might be

of conspiracy, had been committed against him. It was no business of his

to say more, or to think more. He rested his case simply on the fact,

which could not be denied, and which he was not in the least interested

to have explained, one way or the other. The recollection of Gorringe's

obvious disturbance of mind was especially pleasant to him. He himself

had been magnanimous almost to the point of weakness. He had gone out

of his way to call the man “brother,” and to give him an opportunity of

behaving like a gentleman; but his kindly forbearance had been wasted.

Gorringe was not the man to understand generous feelings, much less rise

to their level. He had merely shown that he would be vicious if he knew

how. It was more important and satisfactory to recall that he had also

shown a complete comprehension of the injured husband's grievance. The

fact that he had recognized it was enough--was, in fact, everything.

In the background of his thoughts Theron had carried along a notion of

going and dining with Father Forbes when the time for the evening meal

should arrive. The idea in itself attracted him, as a fitting capstone

to his resolve not to go home to supper. It gave just the right kind

of character to his domestic revolt. But when at last he stood on the

doorstep of the pastorate, waiting for an answer to the tinkle of the

electric bell he had heard ring inside, his mind contained only the

single thought that now he should hear something about Celia. Perhaps he

might even find her there; but he put that suggestion aside as slightly

unpleasant.

The hag-faced housekeeper led him, as before, into the dining-room. It

was still daylight, and he saw on the glance that the priest was alone

at the table, with a book beside him to read from as he ate.

Father Forbes rose and came forward, greeting his visitor with profuse

urbanity and smiles. If there was a perfunctory note in the invitation

to sit down and share the meal, Theron did not catch it. He frankly

displayed his pleasure as he laid aside his hat, and took the chair

opposite his host.

“It is really only a few months since I was here, in this room, before,”

he remarked, as the priest closed his book and tossed it to one side,

and the housekeeper came in to lay another place. “Yet it might have

been years, many long years, so tremendous is the difference that the

lapse of time has wrought in me.”

“I am afraid we have nothing to tempt you very much, Mr. Ware,” remarked

Father Forbes, with a gesture of his plump white hand which embraced the

dishes in the centre of the table. “May I send you a bit of this boiled

mutton? I have very homely tastes when I am by myself.”

“I was saying,” Theron observed, after some moments had passed in

silence, “that I date such a tremendous revolution in my thoughts, my

beliefs, my whole mind and character, from my first meeting with you,

my first coming here. I don't know how to describe to you the enormous

change that has come over me; and I owe it all to you.”

“I can only hope, then, that it is entirely of a satisfactory nature,”

said the priest, politely smiling.

“Oh, it is so splendidly satisfactory!” said Theron, with fervor. “I

look back at myself now with wonder and pity. It seems incredible

that, such a little while ago, I should have been such an ignorant

and unimaginative clod of earth, content with such petty ambitions and

actually proud of my limitations.”

“And you have larger ambitions now?” asked the other. “Pray let me help

you to some potatoes. I am afraid that ambitions only get in our way and

trip us up. We clergymen are like street-car horses. The more steadily

we jog along between the rails, the better it is for us.”

“Oh, I don't intend to remain in the ministry,” declared Theron. The

statement seemed to him a little bald, now that he had made it; and as

his companion lifted his brows in surprise, he added stumblingly: “That

is, as I feel now, it seems to me impossible that I should remain much

longer. With you, of course, it is different. You have a thousand things

to interest and pleasantly occupy you in your work and its ceremonies,

so that mere belief or non-belief in the dogma hardly matters. But in

our church dogma is everything. If you take that away, or cease to have

its support, the rest is intolerable, hideous.”

Father Forbes cut another slice of mutton for himself. “It is a pretty

serious business to make such a change at your time of life. I take it

for granted you will think it all over very carefully before you commit

yourself.” He said this with an almost indifferent air, which rather

chilled his listener's enthusiasm.

“Oh, yes,”, Theron made answer; “I shall do nothing rash. But I have a

good many plans for the future.”

Father Forbes did not ask what these were, and a brief further period of

silence fell upon the table.

“I hope everything went off smoothly at the picnic,” Theron ventured, at

last. “I have not seen any of you since then.”

The priest shook his head and sighed. “No,” he said. “It is a bad

business. I have had a great deal of unhappiness out of it this past

fortnight. That young man who was rude to you--of course it was mere

drunken, irresponsible nonsense on his part--has got himself into a

serious scrape, I'm afraid. It is being kept quite within the family,

and we hope to manage so that it will remain there, but it has terribly

upset his father and his sister. But that, after all, is not so hard

to bear as the other affliction that has come upon the Maddens. You

remember Michael, the other brother? He seems to have taken cold that

evening, or perhaps over-exerted himself. He has been seized with quick

consumption. He will hardly last till snow flies.”

“Oh, I am GRIEVED to hear that!” Theron spoke with tremulous

earnestness. It seemed to him as if Michael were in some way related to

him.

“It is very hard upon them all,” the priest went on. “Michael is as

sweet and holy a character as it is possible for any one to think of. He

is the apple of his father's eye. They were inseparable, those two. Do

you know the father, Mr. Madden?”

Theron shook his head. “I think I have seen him,” he said. “A small man,

with gray whiskers.”

“A peasant,” said Father Forbes, “but with a heart of gold. Poor man! he

has had little enough out of his riches. Ah, the West Coast people, what

tragedies I have seen among them over here! They have rudimentary lung

organizations, like a frog's, to fit the mild, wet soft air they live

in. The sharp air here kills them off like flies in a frost. Whole

families go. I should think there are a dozen of old Jeremiah's children

in the cemetery. If Michael could have passed his twenty-eighth year,

there would have been hope for him, at least till his thirty-fifth.

These pulmonary things seem to go by sevens, you know.”

“I didn't know,” said Theron. “It is very strange--and very sad.” His

startled mind was busy, all at once, with conjectures as to Celia's age.

“The sister--Miss Madden--seems extremely strong,” he remarked

tentatively.

“Celia may escape the general doom,” said the priest. His guest noted

that he clenched his shapely white hand on the table as he spoke, and

that his gentle, carefully modulated voice had a gritty hardness in its

tone. “THAT would be too dreadful to think of,” he added.

Theron shuddered in silence, and strove to shut his mind against the

thought.

“She has taken Michael's illness so deeply to heart,” the priest

proceeded, “and devoted herself to him so untiringly that I get a little

nervous about her. I have been urging her to go away and get a change of

air and scene, if only for a few days. She does not sleep well, and that

is always a bad thing.”

“I think I remember her telling me once that sometimes she had sleepless

spells,” said Theron. “She said that then she banged on her piano at

all hours, or dragged the cushions about from room to room, like a wild

woman. A very interesting young lady, don't you find her so?”

Father Forbes let a wan smile play on his lips. “What, our Celia?”

he said. “Interesting! Why, Mr. Ware, there is no one like her in the

world. She is as unique as--what shall I say?--as the Irish are among

races. Her father and mother were both born in mud-cabins, and she--she

might be the daughter of a hundred kings, except that they seem mostly

rather under-witted than otherwise. She always impresses me as a sort of

atavistic idealization of the old Kelt at his finest and best. There in

Ireland you got a strange mixture of elementary early peoples, walled

off from the outer world by the four seas, and free to work out their

own racial amalgam on their own lines. They brought with them at the

outset a great inheritance of Eastern mysticism. Others lost it, but the

Irish, all alone on their island, kept it alive and brooded on it, and

rooted their whole spiritual side in it. Their religion is full of it;

their blood is full of it; our Celia is fuller of it than anybody else.

The Ireland of two thousand years ago is incarnated in her. They are the

merriest people and the saddest, the most turbulent and the most docile,

the most talented and the most unproductive, the most practical and the

most visionary, the most devout and the most pagan. These impossible

contradictions war ceaselessly in their blood. When I look at Celia,

I seem to see in my mind's eye the fair young-ancestral mother of them

all.”

Theron gazed at the speaker with open admiration. “I love to hear you

talk,” he said simply.

An unbidden memory flitted upward in his mind. Those were the very words

that Alice had so often on her lips in their old courtship days. How

curious it was! He looked at the priest, and had a quaint sensation of

feeling as a romantic woman must feel in the presence of a specially

impressive masculine personality. It was indeed strange that this

soft-voiced, portly creature in a gown, with his white, fat hands and

his feline suavity of manner, should produce such a commanding and

unique effect of virility. No doubt this was a part of the great sex

mystery which historically surrounded the figure of the celibate priest

as with an atmosphere. Women had always been prostrating themselves

before it. Theron, watching his companion's full, pallid face in the

lamp-light, tried to fancy himself in the priest's place, looking down

upon these worshipping female forms. He wondered what the celibate's

attitude really was. The enigma fascinated him.

Father Forbes, after his rhetorical outburst, had been eating. He pushed

aside his cheese-plate. “I grow enthusiastic on the subject of my race

sometimes,” he remarked, with the suggestion of an apology. “But I make

up for it other times--most of the time--by scolding them. If it were

not such a noble thing to be an Irishman, it would be ridiculous.”

“Ah,” said Theron, deprecatingly, “who would not be enthusiastic in

talking of Miss Madden? What you said about her was perfect. As you

spoke, I was thinking how proud and thankful we ought to be for the

privilege of knowing her--we who do know her well--although of course

your friendship with her is vastly more intimate than mine--than mine

could ever hope to be.”

The priest offered no comment, and Theron went on: “I hardly know how to

describe the remarkable impression she makes upon me. I can't imagine to

myself any other young woman so brilliant or broad in her views, or so

courageous. Of course, her being so rich makes it easier for her to do

just what she wants to do, but her bravery is astonishing all the same.

We had a long and very sympathetic talk in the woods, that day of the

picnic, after we left you. I don't know whether she spoke to you about

it?”

Father Forbes made a movement of the head and eyes which seemed to

negative the suggestion.

“Her talk,” continued Theron, “gave me quite new ideas of the range and

capacity of the female mind. I wonder that everybody in Octavius isn't

full of praise and admiration for her talents and exceptional character.

In such a small town as this, you would think she would be the centre of

attention--the pride of the place.”

“I think she has as much praise as is good for her,” remarked the

priest, quietly.

“And here's a thing that puzzles me,” pursued Mr. Ware. “I was immensely

surprised to find that Dr. Ledsmar doesn't even think she is smart--or

at least he professes the utmost intellectual contempt for her, and says

he dislikes her into the bargain. But of course she dislikes him, too,

so that's only natural. But I can't understand his denying her great

ability.”

The priest smiled in a dubious way. “Don't borrow unnecessary alarm

about that, Mr. Ware,” he said, with studied smoothness of modulated

tones. “These two good friends of mine have much enjoyment out of

the idea that they are fighting for the mastery over my poor unstable

character. It has grown to be a habit with them, and a hobby as well,

and they pursue it with tireless zest. There are not many intellectual

diversions open to us here, and they make the most of this one. It

amuses them, and it is not without its charms for me, in my capacity

as an interested observer. It is a part of the game that they should

pretend to themselves that they detest each other. In reality I fancy

that they like each other very much. At any rate, there is nothing to be

disturbed about.”

His mellifluous tones had somehow the effect of suggesting to Theron

that he was an outsider and would better mind his own business. Ah, if

this purring pussy-cat of a priest only knew how little of an outsider

he really was! The thought gave him an easy self-control.

“Of course,” he said, “our warm mutual friendship makes the observation

of these little individual vagaries merely a part of a delightful whole.

I should not dream of discussing Miss Madden's confidences to me, or the

doctor's either, outside our own little group.”

Father Forbes reached behind him and took from a chair his black

three-cornered cap with the tassel. “Unfortunately I have a sick call

waiting me,” he said, gathering up his gown and slowly rising.

“Yes, I saw the man sitting in the hall,” remarked Theron, getting to

his feet.

“I would ask you to go upstairs and wait,” the priest went on, “but my

return, unhappily, is quite uncertain. Another evening I may be more

fortunate. I am leaving town tomorrow for some days, but when I get

back--”