Captain Hap was wiser in his generation than the child of light.
Before a week had gone by, Bayard found himself the victim of
one of the cruelest forms of human persecution--the scandal of a
provincial town.
Its full force fell suddenly upon him.
Now, this was the one thing for which he was totally unprepared; of
every other kind of martyrdom, it seemed to him, he had recognized
the possibility: this had never entered his mind.
He accepted it with that outward serenity which means in a man of
his temperament the costliest expenditure of inward vitality, and,
turning neither to the right nor to the left, kept on his way.
Averted looks avoided him upon the streets. Cold glances sought
him in Angel Alley. Suspicion lurked in eyes that had always met
him cordially. Hands were withdrawn that had never failed to meet
his heartily. His ears quivered with comments overheard as he
passed through groups upon the business streets. The more public
and the more respectable the place, the worse his reception. He
came quickly into the habit of avoiding, when he could, the better
portions of the town.
Before he had time to determine on any given course of conduct, he
felt himself hunted down into Angel Alley, like other outcasts.
The Reverend Mr. Fenton in this crisis did what appealed to him as
a praiseworthy deed. He came down to the chapel, and, in the eyes
of Angel Alley sought his classmate boldly. Give him the credit of
the act; it meant more than we may readily distinguish.
Men who conform, who live like other men, who think in the
accustomed channels, are not to be judged by the standard which we
hold before our heroes. He held out his hand to Bayard with some
unnecessary effusion.
“My dear fellow!” he murmured, “this is really--you know--I came
to--express my sympathy.”
“Thank you, Fenton,” said Bayard quietly.
He said nothing more, and Fenton looked embarrassed. He had
prepared himself at some length to go into the subject. He felt
that Bayard’s natural indiscretion needed the check which it had
probably now received, for life. But he found himself unable to
say anything of the kind. The words shriveled on his tongue. His
own eyes fell before Bayard’s high look. A spectator might have
thought their positions to be reversed; that the clergyman was the
culprit, and the slandered missionary the judge and patron. Fenton
was uncomfortable, and, after a few meaningless words, he said
good-morning, and turned away.
“Of course,” he observed, as he went down the long steps of
the mission, “you will meet this slander by some explanation,
or change of tack? You will adapt your course hereafter to the
circumstances?”
“I shall explain nothing, and change nothing,” answered Bayard
calmly. “I should do the same thing over again to-morrow, if I had
it to do. I have committed no imprudence, and I shall stoop to no
apology. I doubt if there are six civilized places in this country
where an honest man in my position, doing my work, would have been
subjected to the consequences which have befallen a simple deed
of Christian mercy such as has been done by scores of better men
than I, before me. Why, it has not even the merit--or demerit--of
originality! I did not invent the salvation of the Magdalene. That
dates back about two thousand years. It takes a pretty low mind to
slander a man for it.”
This was the only bitter thing he was heard to say. It may be
pardoned him. It silenced the Reverend Mr. Fenton, and he departed
thoughtfully from Angel Alley.
As Bayard looked back upon these lonely days, when the fury of
the storm which swept about his ears had subsided, as such social
tornadoes do, he perceived that the thing from which he had
suffered most keenly was the disapproval of his own people. Wrong
him they did not, because they could not. They might as easily have
smirched the name and memory of the beloved disciple. But criticise
him they did, poor souls! Windover gossip, the ultimatum of their
narrow lives, seemed to them to partake of the finalities of death
and the judgment. The treasurer of the society was troubled.
“We must reef to the breeze! we must reef to the breeze!” he
repeated mournfully. “But, my dear sir, you must allow me to say
that I think it would have been better seamanship to have avoided
it altogether.”
“What would you have had me do, Mr. Bond?” asked Bayard, looking
rather pale. “I am sorry to disappoint _you_. The love and trust of
my own people is all I have,” he faltered.
“Some witness, for instance,” suggested Mr. Bond. “To be sure, you
did call on the police, I am told.”
“All Angel Alley was my witness,” returned Bayard, recovering his
self-possession.
“Some woman, then--some lady?”
“Name the woman. I thought of summoning your wife. Should you have
let her go on such an errand, on such a night, at such an hour, and
under such conditions?”
“I ought to have let her go,” answered the officer of the heretic
church, honestly. “I’m not sure that I should.”
He looked perplexed, but none the less troubled for that, and
sighed as he shook hands with his pastor. Mrs. Bond took her
husband’s arm, and walked away with him. “I would have done it,
John,” she said. But she was crying; so was Mrs. Granite. Jane’s
face was white and scared. Captain Hap was very sober. Job Slip
was significantly silent. Rumor had it, that a fight was brewing
between Job and the Trawls. Job’s anger, if thoroughly aroused,
was a serious affair. Bayard felt the discomfort and annoyance of
his people acutely. He went away alone, and walked up and down
the winter coast, for miles and hours, trying to regain himself
in solitude and the breath of the sea. For some time he found it
impossible to think coherently. A few words got the ring of his
mind, and shook it:--
“From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more
with Him.”
* * * * *
Usually in such a situation, some one trivial occurrence fixes
itself upon the sore imagination of a man and galls him above all
the really important aspects of his misfortune. This trifle came to
Bayard in the reception of a letter from the girl herself.
DEAR SIR, MR. BAYARD: My hart will brake to think I cause you
shame for savin of a poor girl. I see that peece in the paper. It
aint far to gess who done it. If it wasnt for disgrasin you Ide
kill Ben Trawl tonite. I wouldnt mind hangin. I know how Ide do
it too. But dont you trubble I wont shame you no more. I’ll clare
out all-together. So good-bye and God bless you Sir.
This is from, Yours respictfully, LENA.
Bayard’s reply to Lena’s note was to go straight to the gunpowder
factory, and speak with the girl. The superintendent stood by, and
overheard him say, in a commanding tone:--
“Lena, you will not leave this town. You will come to the chapel as
usual. You will sing with us next Sunday. You will pay no attention
to anything that you hear, or see. You will never suffer yourself
even to _suppose_ that any base, low mind or tongue can injure your
pastor. You will do as I bid you, and you will become the woman you
promised to. You will do this with my help or without it. Anything
may happen to a person. Nothing can undo a promise.”
“Mr. Bayard, sir,” said Lena, forcing back her tears, for she was
not a crying girl, “I’m a girl of my word, and I ain’t goin’ back
on you. But there’s one thing I’ve got to say. Mebbe I shouldn’t
have another chance, bein’ things are as they be. I _did_ want
to ask you, Mr. Bayard, sir, if I was to be a good girl long
enough,--as long as you should set the time to make me fit,--do you
suppose, Mr. Bayard, you would ever feel so as if you could touch
your hat to me--same as you do to decent girls?”
The superintendent of the powder factory brushed his hand across
his eyes. Bayard was much moved.
The dark, little figure of the girl, in her working-clothes,
standing stolidly at her post in the most dangerous of the deadly
trades, wherein no “hand” can insure his life, blurred before the
minister. He thought how little life could mean to Lena, at its
kindest and best.
“When the time comes,” he said gently, “I shall lift my hat to you.”
“That’s worth while,” said Lena in her short, forcible way. She
turned and went back to her work.
The factory seemed to throb with the struggle of imprisoned death
to burst its bars. Bayard came out into the air with the long
breath which the bravest man always drew when he left the buildings.
These incidents (which are events to the solitary, missionary life)
were but two days old when Joey Slip climbed the minister’s stairs,
sobbing dolorously.
Rumor was running in Windover that Job was drunk again. Neither the
child nor the wife could say if truth were in it, for neither had
seen the man since yesterday. But Mari had dispatched the boy to
the minister with the miserable news. With a smothered exclamation
which Joey found it impossible to translate, Bayard snatched the
child’s hand, and set forth. His face wore a terrible look. He
reached the wharves in time to come directly upon Job, the centre
of a ring of jeering roughs. Muddy, wet, torn, splashed with slime
from the docks, hatless and raving, Job was doing his maudlin best
to fight Ben Trawl, who stood at a safe distance, smiling with
the cynicism of a rumseller who never drinks. Job--poor Job, the
“reformed man”; Job, who had fought harder for his manhood than
most sober men ever fight for anything from the baby’s crib to the
broadcloth casket; Job, the “pillar” of Christlove mission, the
pride and pet of the struggling people; Job, the one sure comfort
of his pastor’s most discouraged hour,--Job stood there, abased and
hideous.
He had lived one splendid year; he had done one glorious thing;
he had achieved that for which better men than he should take
off their hats to him. And there--Bayard looked at him once, and
covered his face.
Job recognized him, and, frenzied as he was, sunk upon his knees
in the mud, and crawled towards the minister, piteously holding up
his hands. One must have been in Job’s place, or in Bayard’s, to
understand what that moment was to these two men.
In the paltry scenes of what we call the society of the world,
there are no actors who should criticise, as there are few who can
comprehend the rôles of this plain and common tragedy.
With the eyes of a condemning angel, Bayard strode into the group,
and took Job home.
“It’s clear D. T.,” said Captain Hap between his teeth.
Bayard sent for a doctor, who prescribed chloral, and said the
case was serious. Mari put on a clean apron, and dusted up the
rooms, and reinforced the minister, who proceeded to nurse Job for
thirty-six hours. Captain Hap went home. He said he’d rather tie a
slipknot round the fellar’s neck, and drawr it taut.
But when Job came to himself, poor fellow, the truth came with him.
Job had been the blameless victim of one of those incredible but
authenticated plots which lend blackness to the dark complexion of
the liquor trade.
Job was working ashore, it seemed, for a week, being out of a
chance to ship; and he had been upon the wharves, salting down
fish, and came out at his nooning, with the rest, for his lunch.
There was a well, in a yard, by the fish-flakes, and a dipper,
chained, hung from the pump.
It came Job’s turn to drink from the dipper. And when he had
drunk, the devil entered into him. For the rim of the dipper had
been maliciously smeared with rum. Into the parched body of the
“reformed man” the fire of that flavor ran, as flame runs through
stubble in a drought.
The half-cured drunkard remembered putting down his head, and
starting for the nearest grogshop on a run, with a yell. From that
moment till Bayard found him, Job remembered nothing more. Such
episodes of the nether world are not rare enough to be doubted, and
this one is no fiction.
“I’m in for it, now,” groaned Job. “Might as well go to h---- and
done with it.”
Then Bayard, haggard from watching, turned and looked on Job. Job
put his hands before his face.
“Oh, _sir_!” he cried. “But you see, there ain’t a wharf-rat left
in Windover as ’u’d trust me now!”
“Take my hand, Job,” said the minister slowly.
Job took it, sobbing like a baby.
“Now climb up again, Job!” said Bayard in a strong voice. “I’m with
you!”
Thus went the words of the shortest sermon of the minister’s life.
To the end of his days, Job Slip will think it was the greatest and
the best.
Captain Hap, penitent, but with no idea of saying so, came up the
tenement stairs. Mari and Joey sat beside the fire. Mari was frying
chunks of haddock for supper. Joey was singing in a contented
little voice something that he had caught in the mission:--
“Veresawidenessin Godsmer--_cy_
Likevewidenessof vesea....
ForveloveofGod is bwoard--_er_
Vanvemeazzerof mansmine
Anve heartof veE--ter--nal
Ismoswonderfully kine.”
“Hear the boy!” cried Mari, laughing for the first time for many
black days.
“What in the world is he singin’?” asked Joey’s father.
“Why, I’m sure it’s as plain as can be,” said Joey’s mother,--
“‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea.’