“I will bring her home, Mrs. Carruth, in half an hour. I will row
her home, myself. I have a boat here.”
Professor Carruth stood for a moment watching the thronged, bright
doorway into which his daughter had disappeared. The fishermen and
the drunkards, the Windover widows in their crape and calico, the
plain, obscure, respectable parishioners, and the girls from the
street moved in together beneath the white and scarlet lights.
Helen’s voice sounded suddenly through the open windows. She sang:--
“I need Thee every hour.
Stay Thou near by.”
“Hello, Bob,” said a voice in the street. “That’s the minister’s
hymn.” Groups of men moved over from the grogshop to the chapel
door. They collected, and increased in numbers. One man struck into
the chorus, on a low bass,--
“Stay near me, O my Saviour.”
Another voice joined; and another. Up and down the street the men
took the music up. From Angel Alley without, and Christlove within,
the voices of the people met and mingled in “the parson’s hymn.”
The Professor of Theology glanced at the illuminated words above
his head.
“It is growing chilly. I am sure you will take cold,” complained
his wife. With bared, gray head the Professor walked out of Angel
Alley, and his old wife clung silently to his arm. She felt that
this was one of the moments when Mr. Carruth should not be spoken
to.
Bayard brought Helen home as he had promised; and it was but a
little beyond the half of the hour when his dory bumped against
the float. He rowed her over the dim harbor with long, skillful
strokes; Helen fancied that they were not as strong as they might
have been; he seemed to her almost exhausted. They had exchanged
but a few words. Midway of the harbor she had said abruptly,--
“Mr. Bayard, I cannot keep it to myself! I must tell you how what
you said this evening on the beach--how that service made me feel.”
“Don’t!” said Bayard quickly. Helen shrank back into the stern of
the dory; she felt, for the moment, terribly wounded.
“Forgive me!” he pleaded. “I didn’t feel as if I could bear
it--that’s all.”
“I am not in the habit of making a fool of myself over ministers,”
replied Helen hotly. “I never told one I liked his sermon, yet, in
all my life. I was going to say--I meant to say--I _will_ say!” she
cried, sitting up very straight, “Mr. Bayard, you are better than
I am; truly, infinitely, solemnly better. I’ve never even _tried_
to be what you _are_. You’ve done me good, as well as Job, and
Lena, and the rest. I _won’t_ go away without saying it,--and I’m
going away this week.... There!”
She drew a long breath and leaned back.
Bayard rowed on for some moments in inscrutable silence. It was too
dark to see the expression of his face. When he spoke, it was in a
half-articulate, tired way.
“I did not know. Are you coming back?”
“I am going to Campo Bello with the Rollinses,” replied Helen
briefly. “I don’t expect to come back again this year.”
“I wonder I had not thought of it,” said Bayard slowly. “I did
not,” he added.
“The people will miss you,” he suggested, after a miserable pause.
“Oh, they will get used to that,” said Helen.
“And _I_?” he asked, in a tone whose anguish smote suddenly upon
her ears, like a mortal cry. “What is to become of _me_?”
“You’ll get used to it, too,” she said, thrusting out her hands in
that way she had.
His oars dropped across his knees.
Before either of them could speak or think or reason, he had caught
one of her outstretched hands. It lay, warm, soft, quivering,--a
terrible temptation in the grasp of the devotee.
He could have devoured it--her--soul and body; he could have killed
her with kisses; he could have murdered her with love.
Instead, he laid Helen’s hand down gently. He did not so much
as lift it to his starving lips. He laid it down upon her own
lap quite solemnly, as if he relinquished something unspeakably
precious. He took up his oars, and rowed her home.
Neither had spoken again. Helen’s heart beat wildly. She dared not
look at him. Under the solitary lantern of the deserted float she
felt his strong gaze upon her, and it looked, not with the eyes of
angels, but with the eyes of a man.
“Oh, my dear, I love you!” he breathed in a broken voice.
Saying this, and only this, he led her to her father’s door, and
left her.