The Professor threw himself into the situation with a fatherly
tenderness which went to Bayard’s heart; but the theologian was
disconcerted by this glimpse into real life. He had been so
occupied with the misery of the next world that he had never
investigated the hell of this one. He was greatly perplexed.
“As man to man, Bayard,” he said, “you must tell me the exact
amount of truth in those womanly alarms which agitate my daughter’s
heart, and to which I allowed myself to yield without, perhaps,
sufficient reflection. I find it difficult to believe that any harm
can actually befall you in a New England town. That Windover would
really injure you? It seems to me, in cool blood, incredible.”
“_Windover_ would not,” replied Bayard, smiling. “They don’t love
me, but they don’t mob a man for that. _Windover_ won’t harm
me. Did you ever hear a phrase, common along the coast, here,
Professor--‘_Rum done it_’?”
The Cesarea Professor shook his head. “I am not familiar with the
phrase,” he urged; “it lacks in grammar”--
“What it gains in pith,” interrupted Bayard; “but it sums up
the situation. A business that thrives on the ruin of men is not
likely to be sensitive in the direction of inflicting unnecessary
suffering. I have successfully offended the liquor interests of the
whole vicinity. The new chapel represents to them the growth of
the only power in this town which they have found reason to fear.
That’s the amount of it.”
“But the--churches, Bayard--the Christian classes? The
ecclesiastical methods of restraining vice?”
“The ecclesiastical methods do not shut up the saloons,” said
Bayard gently. “Angel Alley is not afraid of the churches.”
“I am not familiar with the literature of the temperance movement,”
observed the Professor helplessly. “It is a foreign subject to me.
I am not prepared to argue with you.”
“You will find some of it on my library shelves,” said Bayard; “it
might interest you some time to glance at it.”
“When my manuscript on the New Version is completed, I shall take
pleasure in doing so,” replied the Professor politely; “but the
point _now_ is, just what, and how much do you fear from the state
of things to which you refer? Helen is a level-headed girl. I take
it for granted that she has not wrought herself into a hysterical
fright without basis. I have acted on my knowledge of my daughter’s
nature. I understand _that_, if I am uninstructed in the temperance
agitation.”
“Helen has not been misinformed, nor has she overestimated
anything,” returned Bayard quietly.
“Is it a mob you fear?”
“Possibly; but probably nothing of the kind. My chief danger is one
from which it is impossible to escape.”
“And that is?”--
“Something underhanded. There is a personal element in it.”
Bayard rose, as if he would bring the conversation to a check.
“There is nothing to be done,” he said, “nothing whatever.
Everything shall go on, precisely as it is arranged. I shall not
run from them.”
“You do not think wise to defer the dedication--for a time?”
“Not an hour! The dedication will take place a week from Sunday.”
The Professor was silent. He found it a little difficult to follow
the working of this young man’s mind.
“And yet,” he suggested anxiously, “after the
marriage--to-morrow--you will take the temporary absence, the
little vacation which your friends advise? You will not think
better of that, I hope, for Helen’s sake?”
“I shall leave Windover for a week, for Helen’s sake,” replied
Bayard gravely.
In his heart he thought that it would make but little difference;
but she should have it to remember that everything had been done.
He would not be foolhardy or obstinate. The sacred rights of the
wife over the man had set in upon his life She should be gratified
and comforted in every way left to the power of that love and
tenderness which God has set in the soul abreast of duty and honor.
He would give the agitation in Angel Alley time to cool, if cool it
could. He would give himself--oh, he would give himself--
Helen, in the next room, sat waiting for him. She ran her fingers
over the keys of the piano; her foot was on the soft pedal; she
sang beneath her breath,--
“Komm beglücke mich?
... Beglücke mich!”
Bayard sought her in a great silence. He lifted her tender face,
and looked down upon it with that quiver on the lower part of his
own which she knew so well; which always meant emotion that he
did not share with her. She did not trouble him to try to have it
otherwise. She clung to him, and they clasped more solemnly than
passionately.
Around the bridegroom’s look in Bayard’s face, the magic circle of
the seer’s loneliness was faintly drawn.
If God and love had collided--but, thank God! He and Love were one.
“Lord, I have groped after Thee, and to know Thy will, and to do
it if I could. I never expected to be happy. Dost Thou mean this
draught of human joy for _me_?”
So prayed Bayard, while her bright head lay upon his breast with
the delicate and gentle surrender of the girl who will be wife
before another sun goes down.
Out upon the piazza of the Flying Jib the Professor was
entertaining visitors, by whose call the lovers were not disturbed.
The Reverend George Fenton had unexpectedly and vaguely appeared
upon the scene. He was accompanied by a lean, thoughtful man,
with clerical elbows and long, rustic legs, being no other than
Tompkinton of Cesarea and the army cape. Professor Carruth had
taken his two old students into the confidence of the family
crisis. The Reverend Mr. Fenton looked troubled.
“I had a feeling that something was wrong. I have been impressed
for days with a sense that I ought to see Bayard--to help him, you
know--to offer him any assistance in my power. He is in such a
singular position! He leads such a singular life, Professor! It is
hard for a man situated as I am, to know precisely what _to_ do.”
“The only thing that can be done for him, just now, that I see,”
suggested the Professor dryly, “is to find him a supply for Sunday.
His marriage to my daughter will, of necessity, involve a short
absence from his missionary duties.”
“I wish I could preach for him!” cried Fenton eagerly. “I should
like nothing better. I should love to do so much for him. He never
has any supplies or vacations, like the rest of us. Now I think of
it, nobody has been near his pulpit for three years, to help him
out--I mean nobody whom _we_ should recognize. I’ve half a mind to
consult my committee. The First Church”--
“_I_ will preach for Bayard,” interrupted Tompkinton with his
old, slow manner. “My church is so small--we are not important
across the Cape, there--it is not necessary for me to consult my
committee. I will preach for him with all my heart; in the evening
at all events--all day, if the Professor here will find me a supply
of some sort.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” observed the Professor quietly; “I will
accept your offer, Tompkinton, for the evening. I shall myself
occupy Mr. Bayard’s pulpit in Windover town hall on Sunday morning.”
“_You_, Professor?”
Fenton turned pale. Tompkinton gave that little lurch to his
shoulders with which, for so many years, he had jerked on the
army cape in cold weather. Tompkinton was well dressed, now, well
settled, well to do, but the same simple, manly fellow. There was
the gentleman in this grandson of the soil, this educated farmer’s
boy; and an instinct as true as the spirit of the faith which he
preached in the old, unnoticed ways, and with the old, unobserved
results. Tompkinton spent his life in conducting weekly prayer
meetings, in comforting old people in trouble, and in preaching
what he had been taught, as he had been taught it. But he was
neither a coward nor a cad for that.
“If I had had a little time to think of this,” protested Fenton.
“My committee are, to a man, opposed to this temperance movement,
and our relation to Bayard is, of course,--you must see,
Professor,--peculiar! But perhaps”--
“Oh, Tompkinton and I can manage,” replied the Professor, not
without a twinkle in his deep eyes. “I don’t suppose the First
Church has ever heard of us, but we will do our humble best.”
Now, as the event fell out, the Professor and Tompkinton changed
their programme a little; and when the time came to do Bayard this
fraternal service,--the first of its kind ever offered to him by
the clergymen of the denomination in which he was reared,--the
Professor drove across the Cape in the hot sun, ten miles, to
fill the Reverend Mr. Tompkinton’s little, country pulpit, and
Tompkinton took the morning service for his classmate.
In the evening the Professor of Theology from Cesarea Seminary
occupied the desk of the heretic preacher in Windover town hall.
The hall was thronged. George Fenton preached to yawning pews; for
the First Church, out of sheer, unsanctified curiosity, lurched
over, and sixty of them went to hear the distinguished Professor.
Bayard’s own people were present in the usual summer evening force
and character.
The Professor of Theology looked uncomfortably at the massed and
growing audience. He was sixty-eight years old, and in all his
scholarly and Christian life he had never stood before an audience
like this. He opened his manuscript sermon,--he had selected a
doctrinal sermon upon the Nature of the Trinity,--and began to read
it with his own distinguished manner.
The audience, restrained at first by the mere effect of good
elocution and a cultivated voice, were respectful for awhile; they
listened hopefully; then perplexedly; then dully. Sentence after
sentence, polished, and sound as the foundations of Galilee or
Damascus Hall, fell softly from the lips of the Cesarea Professor
upon the ears of the Windover fishermen. Doctrine upon doctrine
attacked them, and they knew it not. Proof-text upon proof-text
bombarded them in vain.
The Professor saw the faces of his audience lengthen and fall;
across the rude, red brows of the foreign sailors wonder flitted;
then confusion; then dismay. Drunkards and reformed men and
wretched girls, and the homeless, wretched people of a seaport
town, stood packed in rows before the Professor of Theology, and
gaped upon him. Restlessness struck them, and began to run from man
to man.
“Shut up there!” whispered Job Slip, punching a big Swede. “Be
quiet, can’t ye, for common manners! You’ll disgrace Mr. Bayard!”
“Be civil to the old cove, for the parson’s sake!” commanded
Captain Hap, hitting a Finn, and stepping on the toes of a Windover
seiner, who had presumed to snicker.
“Why don’t he talk English then?” protested the fisherman.
A dozen men turned and left the hall. Half a dozen followed. Some
girls giggled audibly. A group of Norwegians significantly shuffled
their feet on the bare floor.
The Professor of Theology laid down his manuscript. It occurred
to him, at last, that his audience did not understand what he was
saying. It was a dreadful moment. For the first time in his honored
life he had encountered the disrespect of a congregation which he
could not command. He laid down his sermon on the Nature of the
Trinity, and looked the house over.
“I am afraid,” he said distinctly, “that I am not retaining the
interest of this congregation. I am not accustomed to your needs,
or to the manner in which your pastor presents the Truth to you.
But for his sake, you will listen to me, I am sure.”
“Lord, yes,” said the seiner in an audible whisper; “we’d listen to
Bunker Hill Monyment for _him_.”
This irreverence did not, happily, reach the ears of the Professor
of Theology, who, with his famous ease of manner, proceeded to
say:--
“My discourse is on the Nature of the Trinity; and I perceive that
my thoughts on this subject are not your thoughts, and that my ways
of expression are not your ways, and that an interpreter is needed
between this preacher and his audience.... I have been thinking,
since I stood at this desk, about the name which you give to the
beautiful new chapel which your pastor will dedicate for you, God
willing, next Sunday”--
From a remote corner of the hall a sound like that of a serpent
arose, and fell. The Professor did not or would not hear it (no man
could say which), and went firmly on.
“Christlove you call your chapel, I am told. You may be surprised
to know it, but the fact is that the sermon which I have been
preaching to you, and the thing which the tender and solemn name of
your chapel signifies, are one and the same.”
“I don’t see how he figgers that,” muttered the seiner.
“I will try to show you how,” continued the Professor, as if he had
heard the fisherman.
He abandoned his manuscript on the Trinity, and plunged
headlong--not in the least knowing how he was to get out
again--into a short extempore talk upon the life of Christ. The
fishermen listened, for the old preacher held to it till they did;
and as soon as he had commanded their respect and attention, he
wisely stopped. The service came to a sudden but successful end;
and the exhausted Professor thoughtfully retired from his first,
his last, his only experience in the pulpit of the Unsound. The
most depressing part of the occasion was that his wife told him it
was the best sermon she had heard him preach in thirty years.
* * * * *
But Bayard and Helen knew these things not, nor thought of them.
They had been married, as it was decided, upon that Saturday, the
day before. Helen’s father married them. There was no wedding
party, no preparation. Helen had a white gown, never worn before;
Jane Granite sent some of her mother’s roses, and Mrs. Carruth, who
distinguished herself by abnormal self-possession, fastened one
of the roses at Helen’s throat. It was thought best that Windover
should know nothing of the marriage until the preacher and his
bride had left the town; so it was the quietest little wedding that
love and the law allow.
And Bayard and Helen went to her old home in the glory and the
blossom of the Cesarea June. And the great cross came out upon the
Seminary green, for the moon was up that week.
“It used to divide us,” she whispered; “it never can again.”
She wondered a little that he did not answer; but that he only held
her solemnly, in the window where they stood to see the cross.
Helen’s happy nature was easily queen of her. She had begun to
feel that her anxiety for Bayard’s sake was overstrained. Tragic
Windover slipped from her consciousness, almost from her memory.
She felt the sacred right of human joy to conquer fate, and trusted
it as royally as she had trusted him. In spite of himself, he
absorbed something of her warm and brilliant hopefulness. When
she gave herself, she gave her ease of heart. And so the worn and
worried man came to his Eden.