So Emanuel Bayard entered into his Wilderness. Therein he was
tempted like other men of God who renounce the greatest joy of life
for its grandest duty. There he thirsted and hungered, and put
forth no hand towards the meat or drink of human comfort; there he
contended with himself, and hid his face, for he went into solitary
places, and prayed apart, asking for that second strength which
sustains a man in the keeping of the vow that he has not feared to
take upon his soul--not knowing, till God teaches him, how easy it
is to recognize, and how hard to hold, “the highest when we see it.”
* * * * *
Winter drew its yoke of ice about the shrinking shoulders of the
Cape; the fleets huddled in the harbor; the fishermen drowned on
the Grand Banks; Windover shivered and shriveled, and looked with
wincing, winking eyes upon the blinding horizon of the winter sea;
the breakers broke in white fire upon the bar; Angel Alley drank
and cursed to keep warm; and the young preacher’s delicate face,
patiently passing in and out beneath the white and scarlet lights
of the chapel of Christlove, gathered a snowdrift of its own with
the whitening of the year.
His work, like most service sustained in consecration and in common
sense by one pure and strong personality, grew upon his hands; not
steadily, but by means of much apparent failure.
The fame of the heretic missionary had gone abroad as such things
do. It was no uncommon thing for members of the strictest sect of
the Orthodox churches to stand half curious, half deferent, and
wholly perplexed by what they saw and heard, and calculating the
prospects of an experiment which the observer was, as a rule, too
wise a man or too good a woman not to respect.
It even happened now and then that some distinguished clergyman was
seen jammed between a fisherman and a drunkard in the crush by the
door; taking notes of the sermon, studying the man and his methods
with the humility characteristic of large men, and seldom imitated
by little ones.
The Reverend George Fenton was not, but would have liked to be,
one of these eminent and docile clerical visitors at the chapel
of Christlove. He dared not leave his congregation, decorously
scattered to listen to a sound theology, in the pews of the old
First Church, to elbow his unnoticed way among the publicans and
sinners who thronged his classmate’s mission; but he often wished
he could. He asked himself anxiously: “What is the secret? How
does the man do it?” Sometimes he envied his heretic friend the
drunkards, and sailors, the reckless girls, and most of all the
fishermen, sacred in the canon and to the imagination of the
church,--the fishermen, once the chosen friends of Our Lord.
Bayard even fancied that Fenton looked at him a little wistfully;
and that he spoke with him oftener and lingered longer when they
met upon the streets of the sad and tempted town whose redemption
both men, each in his own way, desired and sought, with a sincerity
which this biography would not intimate was to be found only in the
heart of its subject, and hero. For the Reverend George Fenton was
no hypocrite, or Pharisee; the prevailing qualities of his class
not being of this sort. No one rated him more generously than his
heretic classmate; or looked more gently upon the respectable,
dreary effort to save the world by an outgrown method, which the
conformer dutifully and comfortably sustained.
“I heard a Boston man call you the Father Taylor of Windover,”
one day abruptly said the clergyman to the missionary, upon the
post-office steps. “Boston could no farther go, I take it. I hear
your audience has outgrown your mission-room. That must be a great
encouragement; you must consider it a divine leading,” added
Fenton, with the touch of professional slang and jealousy not
unnatural to better men than he. “But you must remember that we,
too, are following the Master in our way; it’s a pretty old and
useful way.”
Then up spoke Captain Hap, who stood at Bayard’s elbow.
“It’s jest about here, Mr. Fenton. You folks set out to _foller_
Him; but our minister, he _lives_ like Him. There’s an almighty
difference.”
Another day, Fenton, with his young wife on his arm, came down
Angel Alley with the air of a tourist inspecting the points of
interest in a new vicinity.
“Bayard!” he exclaimed; “you look as white as a Cesarea snowdrift.
You are overworked, man. What can I do, to help you?--If there
_is_ anything,” he added with genuine concern, “you’d let me know,
wouldn’t you?”
“Probably not, Fenton,” replied Bayard, smiling.
“I mean it,” urged the other, flushing.
“If you do, the time may come,” said Bayard dreamily.
He glanced at his old friend,--the rosy, well-fed man; at the round
face destitute of the carving of great purpose or deep anxiety;
at the pretty girl with the Berkshire eyes who looked adoringly
over the sleek elbow to which she clung. These two well-meaning,
commonplace people seemed ennobled and beautified, as commoner far
than they may be, by their human love and happiness. Bayard, in his
shabby clothes, with his lonely face, watched them with a certain
reverence.
He thought--but when did he _not_ think of Helen?
He wrote; she answered; they did not meet; he worked on patiently;
and the winter went. Bayard drowned himself in his work with the
new and conscious ardor of supreme renunciation. He thought of the
woman whom he loved, as the diver at the bottom of the sea, when
the pumps refuse to work, thinks of sky and shore and sun, of air
and breath.
* * * * *
One bleak, bright February night, Bayard came out from his mission,
and looked about Angel Alley anxiously.
Bob was within, and Tony and Jean were safe; Job Slip was sober,
and Tom, Dick, and Harry were accounted for. But Lena--Lena had not
been seen at Christlove for now many weeks.
The waywardness of the girl had long been sore at Bayard’s heart,
and the step which he took that night was the result of thought and
deliberate purpose. Afterwards he was glad to remember that he had
acted on no one of those mere sentiments or impulsive whims which
are the pitfalls of a philanthropic life.
The hour was not early, decent people were scattering to their
homes, and Windover was giving herself over to the creatures of
the night. It was a windy night, and the snow blew in cold, white
powder from the surface of drifts called heavy for the coast, and
considered a sign of “a spell of weather.”
There was a full moon; and the harbor, as one looked down between
the streets, showed in glints and glimpses, bright and uneasy. The
bellow of the whistling-buoy nine miles out, off the coast, was
audible at firesides. The wind sped straight from Cape Cod, and was
as icy as death.
It was one of the nights when the women of Windover grow silent,
and stand at the window with the shade raised, looking out between
their hands, with anxious, seaward eyes. “God pity the men at sea!”
they say who have no men at sea. But those who have say nothing.
They pray. As the night wears on, and the gale increases, they
weep. They do not sleep. The red light on the Point goes out, and
dawn is gray. The buoy shrieks on malignantly. It “comes on thick”;
and the fog-bell begins to toll. Its mighty lips utter the knell
for all the unburied drowned that are, and have been, and are yet
to be. Windover listens and shudders. It is one of the nights when
the sheltered and the happy and the clean of life bless God for
home, for peace, for fire and pillow. It is one of the nights when
the soul of the gale enters into the soul of the tempted and the
unbefriended, and with it seven devils worse than the first. It was
one of the nights when girls like Lena are too easy or too hard to
find.
Bayard sought her everywhere. She was not to be seen in Angel
Alley, and he systematically and patiently searched the town. With
coat-collar turned up, and hat turned down, he tried to keep warm,
but the night was deadly bleak. It came on to be eleven o’clock;
half past; and midnight approached. He was about to abandon his
quest when he struck a trace of her, and with redoubled patience
he hunted it down. He had taken no one with him in his search for
Lena; in truth, he knew of no person in all that Christian town
who would have wished to share that night’s repulsive errand if he
had asked it. He recognized this fact with that utter absence of
bitterness which is the final grace and test of dedication to an
unselfish end.
“Why should I expect it?” he thought gently. “Duty is not subject
to a common denominator. This is mine and not another’s.”
A policeman gave him, at last, the clew he needed; and Bayard, who
had returned on his track to Angel Alley, halted before the door
of a house at the end of a dark court, within a shell’s-throw of
the wharves. His duty had never led him before into precisely such
a place, and his soul sickened within him. He hesitated, with his
foot on the steps.
“Better stay outside, sir,” suggested the policeman.
Bayard shook his head.
“Shan’t I go with you, sir? You don’t know what you’re about.
Better have an officer along.”
“Stay here, within call, will you?” answered Bayard. “That will do.
The law can’t do my errand.”
“Nor nothin’ else in this town but _that_,” returned the officer,
touching his helmet.
He pointed up the Alley where the large letters of the solemn
white and scarlet sign blazed all night before the chapel of
Christlove. The fishermen could see it from their schooners’
decks as they dropped anchors; and it shone strangely in their
weather-beaten faces as they pushed past--or sank into--the doors
of the dens that lined the street.
Bayard’s eye followed the officer’s finger, lighting with that
solemn radiance peculiar to himself; and with this illumination on
his face he entered the place whose ways take hold on death.
The officer waited without. In an incredibly short time the
minister reappeared. He was not alone. Lena followed him with
hanging head.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Bayard quietly, touching his hat, “I
shall need you no longer.”
He turned, with the girl beside him, and crossed the Alley. The
officer, with a low whistle, lingered a moment, and watched the
astounding pair. In the full moonlight, in the sight of all whom
it did or did not concern, Bayard walked up and down the street
with Lena. It was now near to the stroke of midnight. The two
could be seen conversing earnestly. Lena did not raise her eyes.
The minister watched her eagerly. They paced up and down. Men
staggering home from their sprees stood stupidly and stared at the
two. Old Trawl came to his door and saw them, and called Ben, who
looked, and swore the mighty oath of utter intellectual confusion.
The minister nodded to Ben, and spoke once or twice to some sailor
who awaited salutation; but he suffered no interruption of his
interview with the girl. In the broad moonlight he continued
quietly to walk up and down Angel Alley, with the street-girl at
his side.
“Lena,” Bayard had begun, “I have been trying to help the people
in this Alley for almost a year and a half, and I have met with
nothing to discourage me as much as you do. Some men and women have
grown better, and some have not changed at all. You are growing
worse.”
“That’s so,” assented Lena. “It’s as true as Hell.”
“I begin to think,” replied the minister, “that it must be partly
my fault. It seems to me as if I must have failed, somehow, or made
some mistake--or you would be a better girl, after all this time.
Do you think of anything--Come, Lena! Give your best attention to
the subject--Do you think of anything that I could do, which I have
not done, to induce you to be a decent woman?”
“I tried, for you!” muttered Lena. “I tried; you know I did!”
“Yes, I know you did; and I appreciated it. You failed, that was
all. You are discouraged, and so am I. Now, tell me! What else can
I do, to make a good girl of you? For it’s got to be done, you
see,” he added firmly. “I can’t have this any longer. You disgrace
the chapel, and the people, and me. It makes me unhappy, Lena.”
“Mr. Bayard! Mr. Bayard!” said Lena with trembling lip, “I’ll go
drown in the outer harbor. I ain’t fit to live ... if _you_ care. I
didn’t suppose you _cared_.”
“You are not fit to die, Lena,” returned Bayard gently. “And I
do care. I have always thought you were born to be a fine woman.
There’s something I like about you. You are generous, and brave,
and kind-hearted. Then see what a voice you have! You might have
been a singer, Lena, and sung noble things--the music that makes
people purer and better. You might have”....
“Oh, my God!” cried Lena; “I was singin’ in that--in
there--to-night. They’re always after me to sing ’em into
damnation.”
“Lena,” said Bayard in a thrilling tone, “look into my face!”
She obeyed him. High above her short stature Bayard’s delicate
countenance looked down at the girl. All the loathing, all the
horror, all the repulsion that was in him for the sin he suffered
the sinner to see for the first time. His tender face darkened and
quivered, shrinking like some live thing that she tormented.
“Oh,” wailed Lena, “am I like _that_--to you? Is it as bad as
_that_?”
“It is as bad as that,” answered the minister solemnly.
“Then I’ll go drown,” said Lena dully; “I might as well.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You will not drown. You will live, and
make yourself a girl whom I can respect.”
“Would you _ever_ respect me--_respect_ ME, if I was to be--if I
was to do what you say?” asked Lena in a low, controlled tone.
“I should respect you from my soul,” said Bayard.
“Would you--would you be willing to--would you feel ashamed to
shake hands with me, Mr. Bayard,--if I was a different girl?”
“I will shake hands with you now,” returned the minister quietly,
“if you will give me your word of honor that you will never, from
this hour”--
“I will never, from this hour, so help me God!” said Lena solemnly.
“So help her, God!” echoed Bayard.
He lifted his hand above her head, as if in prayer and blessing;
then gently extended it. The girl’s cold, purple fingers shook as
he touched them. She held her bare hand up in the moonlight, as if
to bathe it in whiteness.
“Mr. Bayard, sir,” she said in her ordinary voice, “it is a
bargain.”
Bayard winced, in spite of himself, at the words; but he looked at
Lena’s face, and when he saw its expression he felt ashamed of his
own recoil.
“Very well,” he answered, adopting her business-like tone, “so it
is. Now, then, Lena! What next? What are you going to do? Have you
any home--any friends--anywhere to turn?”
“I have no friend on all God’s earth but you, sir,” said Lena
drearily, “but I guess I’ll manage, somehow. I can mostly do what
I set out to.”
“Your mother?” asked Bayard gently.
“She died when my baby was born, sir. She died of the shame of it.
I was fifteen year old.”
“_Oh!_ and the--the man? The father of your child?”
“He was a gentleman. He was a married man. I worked for him, in a
shop. _He_ ain’t dead. But I’d sooner go to hell than look to him.”
“I’d about as soon you would”--the minister said in his heart. But
his lips answered only,--“You poor girl! You poor, poor, miserable
girl!”
Then, for the first time, Lena broke down, and began to cry, there,
on the streets, in the sight of every one.
“I must find you work--shelter--home--with some lady. I will do
whatever _can_ be done. Rely on me!” cried Bayard helplessly.
He began to realize what he had done, in undertaking Lena’s “case”
without the help of a woman. Confusedly he ran over in his mind the
names of the Christian women whom he knew, to whom he could turn in
this emergency. He thought of Helen Carruth; but an image of the
Professor’s wife, her mother, being asked to introduce Lena into
the domestic machinery of a Cesarea household, half amused and half
embittered him. He remembered the wife of his church treasurer,
a kindly woman, trained now to doing the unexpected for Christ’s
sake.
“I will speak to Mrs. Bond. I will consider the matter. Perhaps
there may be some position--some form of household service,” he
ventured, with the groping masculine idea that a domestic career
was the only one open to a girl like Lena.
Then Lena laughed.
“Thank you, sir. But I ain’t no more fit for housework than I be
for a jeweler’s trade, or floss embroidery, or a front pew in
Heaven. There ain’t a lady in Christendom would put up with me. I
wouldn’t like it, either,” said Lena candidly. “There’s only one
thing I would like. It’s just come over me, standin’ here. I guess
I’ll manage.”
“I shall wish to know,” observed Bayard anxiously, “what you are
going to do, and where you will be.”
“I’ll take a room I know of,” said Lena. “It ain’t in Angel Alley.
It’s a decent place. I’ll get Johnny’s mother to come along o’ me.
She’s dead sick of the Widders’ Home. She’s kinder fond of me,
Johnny’s mother is, and she can take in or go out, to help a bit.
Then I’ll go over to the powder factory.”
“The powder factory?” echoed the puzzled pastor.
“The gunpowder factory, over to the Cut,” said Lena. “They’re
kinder short of hands. It ain’t a popular business. The pay’s good,
and Lord, _I_ shouldn’t care! The sooner I blow up, the safer I’ll
be. I guess I’d like it, too. I always thought I should.”
“Very well,” said the minister helplessly. “That may answer, till
we can find something better.”
It was now past twelve o’clock, and the night was growing bitterly
cold. Bayard said good-night to Lena, and they separated opposite
Trawl’s door.
He went shivering home, and stirred up his fire. He was cold to the
heart. That discreet afterthought which is the enemy of too many
of our noble decisions, tormented him. He turned to his books, and
taking one which was lying open upon the study-table read:--
“He spoke much about the wrongs of women; and it is very touching
to know that during the last year of his life he frequently went
forth at night, and endeavored to redeem the fallen women of
Brighton.”...
It was not three days from this time that Captain Hap approached
the minister on the Alley, with a sober and anxious face. He held
in his hand a copy of the “Windover Topsail.” His rough finger
trembled as it pressed the paragraph which he handed in silence for
Bayard to read:--
“We regret to learn that a certain prominent citizen of this
place who has been laboring among the sailors and fishermen in a
quasi-clerical capacity, is so unfortunate as to find his name
associated with a most unpleasant scandal arising out of his
acquaintance with the disreputable women of the district in which
he labors. We wish the Reverend gentleman well out of his scrape,
but may take occasion to suggest that such self-elected censors of
our society and institutions must learn somehow that they cannot
touch pitch and not be defiled, any more than ordinary men who do
not make their pretensions to holiness.”
“Well?” said Bayard, quietly returning the paper.
Job Slip had joined them, and read the paragraph over the Captain’s
shoulder. Job was white to the lips with the virile rage of a man
of the sea.
“I’ve shipped here, and I’ve coasted there, and I’ve sailed
eenymost around the world,” slowly said Captain Hap. “I never in my
life--and I’m comin’ on seventy-five year old--I never knew no town
I wouldn’t d’ruther see a scandal a-goin’ in, than this here. It’s
Hell let loose on ye,” added the Captain grimly.
“Find me the fellar that put up that job!” roared Job Slip, rolling
up his sleeves.
“He ain’t fur to seek,” answered the Captain with a short laugh.
“He’s the devil and all his angels smithered into one!” raved Job.
“That’s drawrin’ of it mild,” said Captain Hap.
“This--low--matter does not trouble me,” observed Bayard, smiling
with genuine and beautiful remoteness.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Captain Hap; “that’s all you know!”