It is manifestly as unfair to judge of a place by its March as to
judge a man’s disposition by the hour before dinner. As the coldest
exteriors may conceal the warmest loves, so the repelling Cesarean
winter holds in store one of the most alluring summers known to
inland New England. The grass is riper, the flowers richer, the
ranks of elms are statelier, the skies are gentler, and the people
happier than could be expected of Cesarean theology. Nay, theology
itself unbends in April, softens in May, warms in June, and grows
sunny and human by the time the students are graduated and turned
loose upon the world,--a world which is, on the whole, so patient
with their inexperience, and so ready to accept as spiritual
leaders men whose own life’s lessons are yet to be learned, and
whose own views of the great mysteries which they dare to interpret
are so much more assured than they will be ten years later.
Emanuel Bayard and Helen Carruth walked together beneath the
ancient trees that formed the great cross upon the Seminary green.
The snow professor was melted out of existence; head of ice and
lecture of sleet had vanished months ago. Dandelions glittered
in the long grass. Sparrows built nests under the awful chapel
eaves. It was moonlight and warm,--a June night,--and the elms cast
traceries of fine shadows, like a net, about the feet of the young
people; they seemed to become entangled in the meshes, as they
strolled up and down and to and fro, after the simple fashion of
the town; which pays no more attention to a couple sauntering in
broad day, or broad moonlight, in the sight of gods and men, across
the Seminary “yard,” than it does to the sparrows in the chapel
eaves.
They were not lovers, these two; hardly friends, at least in the
name of the thing; she was not an accessible girl, and he was a
preoccupied man. A certain comfortable acquaintance, such as grows
without drama in the quiet society of university towns, had brought
them together, as chance led, without distinct volition on the part
of either. He would graduate in three days. He had called to say
good-by to the Professor’s family, and had taken Miss Helen out
to see the shadows on the cross where the paths met--the mild and
accepted form of dissipation in Cesarea; for Professors’ daughters.
They walked without agitation, and talked without sentiment. Truth
to tell, their talk was serious, above their years, and beyond
their relation.
The fact was that Emanuel Bayard had that spring with difficulty
received his license to preach. There was a flaw in his theology.
The circumstance was momentous to him. His uncle, for one thing,
had been profoundly displeased; had rebuked, remonstrated, and
commanded; had indeed gone so far as to offend his nephew with
threats of a nature which the young man did not divulge to Miss
Carruth, for his natural reserve was deep. She had noticed that
he did not confide in her as readily as the other students she
had known. But he had told her enough. The Professor’s daughter,
too well used to the ecclesiastical machinery and ferment of the
day, was as familiar with its phases and phrases as other girls
are with the steps of a cotillion or the matrimonial chances of a
watering-place. She knew quite well the tremendous importance of
what had happened.
“I understand,” she said in her deep, rich, almost boyish voice,
“I understand it all perfectly. You wouldn’t say you did, when you
didn’t.”
“How _could_ I?” interrupted Bayard.
“You couldn’t, and so they stirred up that fuss. You were more
honest than the other fellows. And you were punished for it.”
“You are good to put it in that way, but what right have I to
take it in that way?” urged Bayard wistfully. “The other fellows
are just as good men as I; better, most of them. Fenton passed
all right, and the rest. I don’t feel inclined to parade my
ecclesiastical honesty and set myself above them,--in my own mind,
I mean. I have dropped below them in everybody else’s; of course I
know that.”
“Whom do you mean by everybody else?” demanded Helen quickly.
“Your uncle, Mr. Hermon Worcester? The Trustees? The Faculty? And
those old men on the council? Oh, I know them! Haven’t I dined and
breakfasted on Councils and Faculties ever since we came here?
Haven’t I eaten and drunken and breathed Trustees and doctrines,
and what is sound, and what isn’t, and--Don’t you tell, but I
never was afraid of a Trustee in my life--never! I don’t know
another soul in Cesarea who isn’t,--not even my father. When I was
a little girl, I used to ruffle up their beaver hats the wrong
way, out in the hall, so they would look dissipated when they went
over to the chapel. Then I hid behind the door to see. But I never
told of it--before. You won’t tell your uncle, will you? I hid a
kitten in his hat, once, and when he came out of the study the
hat was walking all over the hall floor, without visible means of
locomotion.”
Bayard laughed, as she had meant he should. The tense expression of
his face relaxed; she watched him narrowly.
“Come,” she said in a changed tone, “take me home, please. The
house is full of Anniversary company. I ought to be there.”
He turned at her command, and took her towards her father’s house.
They walked in silence down the long Seminary path. She was dressed
in light muslin with a violet on it, and wore ribbons that matched
the violet. She had a square of white lace thrown over her bright
hair. The meshes of the tracery from the elm-trees fell thickly
under her quick tread. At the stone posts which guarded the great
lawns, she hesitated; then set her feet resolutely out from the
delicate net into the bright spaces of the open road.
“Mr. Bayard,” she said in her clear voice, “you _are_ an honest
man. It is better to be that than to be a minister.”
“If one cannot be both,” amended Bayard. “But to start in like
this, with a slur attached to one’s name at the beginning,--I don’t
suppose you understand how it dooms a fellow, Miss Carruth. Its
equivalent would be almost enough to disbar a man in law, or to
ruin him in medicine.”
“I understand the whole miserable subject!” cried Helen hotly. “I
am sick to my soul of it! I wish”--She checked herself. “Let me
see,” she added more calmly. “What was it they tormented you about?
Eternal punishment?”
“I managed to escape on that,” said Bayard. “I don’t know anything
about it, and I said so. I think, myself, there is a good deal of
cheap talk afloat on that subject. Our newspapers and novels are
full of it. It is about the only difficult doctrine in theology
that outsiders understand the relations of; so they stick on that,
and make the most of it. It is an easy way of making the Christian
religion intolerable--if one wants to. My difficulty was rather
with--I see you know something of our technical terms--with what we
call verbal inspiration.”
“Oh yes.” Helen nodded. “Whether ‘The Lord will have war with
Amalek from generation to generation’ was inspired by Almighty
God; or ‘Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,--Reuben, Gad, and Asher,
and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali,’ and all that. I know.... Inspired
moonshine! I am a little bit of a heretic myself, Mr. Bayard; but
I’m not--I’m not as honest as you; I’m not pious, either.”
“I hope you don’t think _I_ am _pious_!” began Bayard resentfully.
But she laughed sweetly in his frowning face. They stood at her
father’s high stone steps. The Anniversary company were chatting in
the parlors.
“Good-night,” she said in a lower tone; and then more gently, “and
good-by.”
He started slightly at the word; turned as if he would have said
something, but said it not. He took her hand in silence; then
perceived that she had withdrawn it suddenly, coldly, it seemed,
and had vanished from him up the steps of stone.
He walked back to Galilee Hall slowly. His bent eyes traced the
net of shadows around his reluctant feet. What was that? Inspired
moonshine? Inspired moonshine! He lifted his face and looked abroad
on Cesarea Hill.
His head was heavy, and his heart throbbed. Perhaps at that moment,
if he had been asked which was the greater mystery, God or woman,
this honest man could not have answered.
With sudden hunger for solitude, he went to his room. But it
was full of fellow-students. Fenton was there, and Tompkinton,
Jaynes, Bent, and Holt, and the middler. They received him noisily,
and he sat down among them. They related the stories current
in denominational circles,--ecclesiastical jokes and rumors of
sectarian conflicts; they interchanged gossip about who was called
where, and what churches were said to lack supplies, the figures
of salaries, the statistics of revivals, and the prospects of
settlement open to the senior class.
Bayard listened silently. His heart was not with them, nor in their
talk. Yet he criticised himself for criticising them. Besides, _he_
had received no call to settle anywhere.
Almost alone among the intellectual men of his class, he found
himself, at the end of his preparatory education, undesired and
unsummoned by the churches to fill a pulpit of them all.
He had done his share, like the rest, of that preliminary preaching
which decides the future of a man in his profession; but he
stood, on the eve of his graduation, among his mates, marked and
quivering,--this sensitive fellow,--that most miserable of all
educated, restless, and wretched young men with whom our land
abounds, “a minister without a call.”
He had said nothing to Helen Carruth about this. A man does not
tell a woman such things until he has to.
Something in his face struck the students quiet after a while, and
they dropped away from the room. His friend Fenton made the move.
“It is said,” he whispered to Tompkinton, as they clattered down
the dusty stairs of Galilee Hall, “that his trouble with that New
Hampshire Council has followed him. It is reported that his license
did not come easily. It has got abroad that he is not sound.
Nothing could be more unfortunate--or more unnecessary,” added
Fenton in his too cheerful voice. There had been no doubt of _his_
theology. _He_ had received three calls. As yet he had accepted
none. He expected to be married in the fall, and looked for a
larger salary.
Suddenly he stopped and clapped his hands to his head.
“Bayard!” he called loudly. “Bayard, come to the window a minute!”
The outline of Bayard’s fine head appeared faintly in the
third-story window, against the background of his unlighted room.
The moon was so bright that his face seemed to be a white flame, as
he looked down on his classmates from that height.
“I brought up your mail,” said Fenton, “and forgot to tell you.
You’ll find a letter lying on your table behind the third volume of
Dean Alford. You keep your room so dark I was afraid you mightn’t
see it.”
Bayard thanked him, and groped for the letter; but he did not
light the lamp to read it; he sat on in the moonlit room, alone
and still. His heart was hot within him as he remembered how the
students talked. That vision which sets a man apart from his
fellows, and thus makes him miserable or blessed, or both, beckoned
to him with distant, shining finger. His face fell into his hands.
Great God! what did it mean to take upon one’s self that sacred
Name in which a Christian preacher stands before his fellow-men?
What had common pettiness or envy, narrow fear or little weakness,
to do with the soul of a teacher of holiness? How easy to quibble
and evade, and fall into rank! How hard to stand apart, to look the
cannon in the eye, alone!
It is not easy for men of the world, of ordinary business,
pleasure, politics, and those professions whose standards are
pliable, to understand the noble civil war between the nature and
the position of a man like Bayard; and yet it might be worth while
to try.
There is something so much higher and more delicate than our own
common standards of ethics that it is refining to respect, even if
we fail to comprehend, the struggles of a man who aspires to the
possession of perfect spiritual honor.
Bayard had not moved nor lifted his face from his hands, when a
step which he recognized heavily struck and slowly mounted the
lower flight of the old stairs of Galilee Hall. It was his uncle,
Trustee of Cesarea Seminary, and of the faith of its founders,
returning from the home of the Professor of Hebrew, where he had
been entertained on Anniversary week.
Bayard sighed and groped for a match. This interview could not be
evaded, but he winced away from it in every nerve. It is easier to
face the obloquy of the world than the frown of the man or woman
who has brought us up.
Hermon Worcester was bitterly mortified that Emanuel had received
no “call.” He had not said so, yet, but his nephew knew that this
well-bred reserve had reached its last breath. As Bayard struck the
light, he perceived the forgotten letter in his hand, and, perhaps
thinking to defer a painful scene for a moment, said, “Your pardon,
Uncle,” and tore the envelope.
The letter contained a formal and unanimous call from the seaside
parish whose vacant pulpit he had been supplying for six weeks to
become their pastor.
* * * * *
“Helen! Helen!”
The mild, cultivated whine of the Professor’s wife complained
through the hot house.
Helen ran in dutiful response. It was late, and the Anniversary
guests had scattered to their rooms. The girl was partly undressed
for the night, and stood in her doorway gathering her cashmere
wrapper about her tall, rich form. Mrs. Carruth looked through the
half-open door of her own room.
“I cannot get your father out of his study, Helen,” she urged
plaintively. “He has one of his headaches at the base of the
brain--and those extra Faculty meetings before him this week, with
all the rest. Do go down and see if you can’t send him up to bed.”
Helen buttoned her white gown to the throat, and ran softly
downstairs to the study. The Professor of Theology sat at his
study table with a knot between his eyes. A pile of catalogues lay
before him; he was jotting down statistics with his gold pencil on
old-fashioned foolscap paper. He pushed the paper aside when he
saw his daughter, and held out his hand to her, smiling. She went
straight to him as if she had been a little girl, and knelt beside
him, crossing her hands on his knee. He put his arm around her; his
stern face relaxed.
“You are to put the entire system of Orthodox theology away and
come to bed, Papa,” she said, with her sweet imperiousness. “Mother
says you have a headache at the base of something. It is pretty
late--and it worries her. What are you doing? Counting theologues?
Counting theologues! At your time of life! As if you couldn’t find
anything better to do! What is this?” She caught up a stray slip of
paper. “‘Deaf--deaf as an adder: 10. Blind--stone-blind: 6.’ What
in the name of--Anniversary week does _that_ mean?”
“That is a personal memorandum,” said the Professor, flushing.
“Tear it up, Helen.”
“I know,” said Helen, nodding. “It’s a private classification
of theologues. Which does it catalogue, their theology or their
intellects? Come, Papa!”
“I’ll never tell you!” laughed the Professor, shutting his thin,
scholarly lips. And he never did. But the laugh had gained the
point, as she intended. He took his German student lamp and started
upstairs. Helen walked through the long, dim hall with her two
hands clasped lovingly upon his arm.
“I _am_ bothered,” admitted the Professor, stopping at the foot of
the stairs, “about one of my boys. He is rather a favorite with me.
There isn’t a finer intellect in the senior class.”
“But how about his Christianity, Father?” asked the girl
mischievously.
“His _Christianity_ is all right, so far as I know,” admitted the
Professor slowly. “It is his theology that is the hitch. He isn’t
sound. He has received no call.”
“Do I know him?” asked Helen in a different tone.
The Professor of Theology turned, and held his student lamp at
arm’s length above his daughter’s face, which he scanned in silence
before he said:--
“I am not prepared to answer that question, Helen. Whether you know
him I can’t say; I really cannot say whether you know him or not.
I’m not sure whether I do, myself. But I am much annoyed about the
matter. It is a misfortune to the Seminary, and a mortification to
the young man.”
He kissed his daughter tenderly, and went upstairs with the weary
tread of a professional man at the end of a long day’s work.
Helen went to her own room and shut the door. But she did not light
the candles. She sat down at her open window, in the hot, night
wind. She leaned her cheek against her bare arm, from which the
loose sleeve fell away. The elms were in such rich leaf that she
could see the Seminary buildings only in broken outline now. But
there was wind enough to lift and toss the branches, and through
one of the rifts in the green wall she noticed that a light was
burning in the third-story northwest corner of Galilee Hall.
It was past midnight before she went to bed. As she closed her
blinds, for the first time in her life, the Professor’s daughter
did deliberately, and of self-acknowledged intention, stoop to take
a look at the window of a student.
“His light is still burning,” she thought. “What can be the matter?”
Then she flushed red with a beautiful self-rebuke, and fled to her
white pillow.
Night deepened into perfect silence on Cesarea Hill. The last light
in Galilee Hall went out. The moon rode on till morning. In the
deserted green the clear-cut paths shone wide and long, and the
great white cross lay as if nailed to its place, all night, between
the Seminary and the Professor’s house.