Helen’s happy heart proved prophet; so they said, and smiled. For
there was no mob. Sunday dawned like a dream. The sun rode up
without cloud or fire. The sea carried its cool, June colors. The
harbor wore her sweetest face. The summer people, like figures on a
gay Japanese fan, moved brightly across the rocks and piers; Bayard
and Helen looked out of the windows of the Flying Jib, and watched
them with that kindness of the heart for the interests of strangers
which belongs to joy alone. A motionless fleet lay in the harbor,
opening its silvery wings to dry them in the Sunday sun.
The fishermen had hurried home by scores to witness the dedication.
Everybody had a smile for the preacher’s bride,--the boarder on the
rocks, the fisherman from the docks.
Every child or woman to whom she had ever done a kindness in her
inexperienced, warm-hearted fashion, remembered it and her that
day. She wore the unornamented cream-white silk dress in which she
had been married; for Bayard asked it.
“The people will like to see you so,” he said. “It will give them a
vision.”
All the town was alive and alert. The argument of success, always
the cogent one to the average mind, was peculiarly effective in
Windover. People who had never given the mission a thought before,
and people who had given it many, but never a kindly one, looked
at the doors of the new chapel, smothered in wild Cape roses for
the solemn gala, and said: “That affair in Angel Alley seems to
prosper, spite of everything. There may be something in it, after
all.”
It was expected that the churches themselves, though reserved
on the subject, would be better represented at Christlove that
evening, than they cared to be; for the young people were
determined to see the dedication, and would pair off in scores
to Angel Alley, leaving their elders behind, to support the
ecclesiastical foundations in decorum and devotion, as by the creed
and confession bound.
The attendance of other audiences was not encouraged, however, by
the pastor in Angel Alley; his own would more than fill the chapel.
All the little preparations of the people went on quietly, and
he brought them, as it was his will to do, without weariness or
worry, to the evening. He wished the dedication of his chapel to
be free from the fret and care which turn so many of our religious
festivals into scrambles,--I had almost said, shambles, for the
harm they do to exhausted women, and to careworn men.
The day passed easily. Bayard himself, though moving under deep
excitement, gave no evidence of it. He was as quiet as the Saint
Michael in the picture, whose foot was on the dragon, and whose
head was in the skies.
The day passed uneventfully. The evening was one of Windover’s
fairest and most famous. The sky gave the ethereal colors of
transparent rose-clouds, and the harbor returned them delicately.
There was a slight, watery line in the northwest, but the oldest
sailors scarcely noticed it. Nothing had happened in any way to
hinder the movement of the ceremonial, or to mar its success. There
was no mob, nor threat of any. There was no mass, no riot, no
alarm. Angel Alley was decorous--if one might say so, obtrusively
decorous. Captain Hap, and Job Slip, the special police, and the
officers of the mission looked out of narrow lids at Angel Alley,
and watched guardedly.
Not a misdemeanor disturbed the calm of this, to all appearance,
now law-abiding--nay, law-adoring street. Saloon after saloon that
Bayard had closed presented locked front doors to the thirstiest
sailor who swaggered from the wharves in search of what he might
swallow. Nameless dens that used to flourish the prosperity of
their sickening trade were shut.
Old Trawl’s door was barred. The Trawls themselves were invisible.
There would be no mob. So said the treasurer of the chapel. So said
the Windover police. So thought the anxious Professor, and his
tearful wife. So said Helen, sparkling with the pretty triumph of
love and joy.
“Dear! You see we were mistaken. They _do_ love you here, in rough
old Windover--bless it, after all! We were too anxious--I was
worried; I own it, now. I was afraid because you were so precious
to me. And I could not be with you ... if anything ... went wrong.
But _now_”--
“Now,” he said, “nothing _can_ go wrong. For you are mine, and I am
yours, and this is forever.”
“I am glad to hear you speak so cheerfully,” she said, catching at
the lighter note in the chord of his words.
He did not answer her; and when she looked up, she was surprised at
the solemn expression of his face.
“Love,” he said, “it is time to go. Kiss me, Helen, before we
start.”
They stood at the window in her own little room in the summer
cottage.
The tide was rising, and it gained quietly upon the beaches and
the pier. Bayard looked out upon the sea, for a moment, out to
the uttermost horizon’s purple curve. Then he took his wife to
his heart, and held her there; within a clasp like that, no woman
speaks, and Helen did not.
* * * * *
The Professor and his wife passed down Angel Alley. The Reverend
Mr. Tompkinton and that dear old moderator, the very Orthodox but
most Christian minister who had always done a brother’s deed by the
heretic pastor when he could, followed the great Professor. These
officers of the evening’s ceremony entered the chapel, and--not
staying to leave Mrs. Carruth in a front pew, but leading her with
them--passed on to the platform.
Whispers buzzed about.
“The minister! Where’s the minister? Has anything happened to Mr.
Bayard?”
For the chapel was already full. Captain Hap trotted impatiently
down the aisle. Job Slip looked at the policeman in the vestibule
in a worried way. But the officer stolidly signaled that all was
well; and Captain Hap and Job Slip and scores of watchers breathed
again.
The congregation increased quietly. Angel Alley was unprecedentedly
still. The audience was serious and civil. All of Bayard’s own
people were there--many citizens of Windover--and the young folks
from the churches, as expected.
Then, came the throng from the wharves. Then, came the crowd from
the streets. Then, came the rough, red faces from foreign ports,
and from the high seas, and from the Grand Banks, and Georges’.
There came all the homeless, neglected, tossed, and tempted people
whom Bayard loved, and who loved him. There came the outcast, and
the forgotten, and the unclean of heart and body. There came the
wretches whom no one else thought of, or cared for. There came
the poor girls who frequented no other house of worship, but were
always welcomed here. There came the common people, who heard him
gladly; for to them he spoke, and for them he lived.
The preacher walked down Angel Alley with his wife, in her white
dress, upon his arm. The Alley was thronged with spectators who
did not or who could not enter the chapel. Two policemen stepped
forward to escort the minister, but he waved them back. He and
Helen walked quietly to the chapel steps, and were about to
enter, when a slight disturbance in the crowd, at their immediate
side, caused Bayard to look around. A girl was struggling with an
officer, to get near enough to speak to the minister.
“Get back there!” commanded the policeman. “Keep back, I say! This
is no place nor time for the likes of _you_ to pester the minister!”
“Let her come!” ordered Bayard authoritatively. For it was Lena.
The girl was pale, and her handsome eyes had a ferocious look.
“I’ve got something to tell him,” announced Lena with calm
determination. “It’s important, or I wouldn’t bother him, is it
likely? I ain’t no such a fool nor flat.”
She approached, at Bayard’s beck, and said a few words in a tone so
low that even the wife upon his arm did not understand them.
“Lena still feels a little anxious,” said Bayard aloud, distinctly.
“Have you any wishes to express, Helen?”
But Helen, smiling, shook her head. She felt exalted and not
afraid. She would have gone with him to death; but she did not
think about death. She did not believe that his angels would suffer
a pebble of Windover to dash against him; nor that a curl of his
gold-brown head would come to harm. His mood ruled her utterly. His
own exaltation, his beauty, his calm, his spiritual power, made
clouds before her eyes, on which he moved as a god.
So they entered the chapel, together. As they did so, Bayard
turned, and looked back. Before all the people there, the preacher
lifted his hat to Lena, and passed on.
The girl’s dark face dropped upon her breast, as if she made
obeisance before him; then she lifted it with the touching pride of
lost self-respect regained. Her lips moved. “He thinks I’m fit, at
last,” said Lena.
The preacher and his young wife passed through the rose-wreathed
door, and into the chapel. Roses were there, too; their pale, pink
lamps burned all over the chapel, wherever hand could reach, or
foot could climb. This was the decoration chosen to welcome the
June bride to Windover--the people’s flower, the blossom of the
rocks and downs.
It was a pleasant chapel. The library, the gymnasium, the
bowling-alley, opened from the prayer-room. Pictures and books and
games and lounging-places for tired fellows were part of Bayard’s
Christianity. Many a fisherman, smoking in the room below, where an
oath turned a man out, and a coarse phrase was never heard, would
listen to the singing of old hymns, above him, and lay his pipe
down, and wonder what the music meant, and catch a line he used to
hear his mother sing, and so steal up to hear the rest; and sing
the loudest of them all, perhaps, before the hymn was done.
Bayard moved up among his silent people, to his place. His wife
went with him, and he led her to her mother’s side, at his right
hand.
“In any event,” he thought, “I could reach her in a moment.”
His eyes sought hers for that instant. She neither blushed nor
paled, but had her sweet composure. In her bridal white, she looked
like the lily of his life’s work, the angel of his worried heart.
It seemed to him as if peace and hope came with her, as purity
and honor dwelt in her presence. He felt happier and stronger for
knowing that she was so near him, now, and, with a brightening brow
he gave the signal for opening the evening’s service.
It was a short and pleasant service. The great Professor, cordially
recognized by the rough audience that he had not allowed to conquer
him last Sunday, contributed his most distinguished manner, his
best good sense, and the least possible evidence of his theology
to the dedicating hour. The old moderator and the pastor’s
classmate from across the Cape added their heartiest help. Most
of the congregation omitted to notice that the clergymen from the
city were not present. They were not missed. Who could say if
they had been invited to dedicate Emanuel Bayard’s chapel? He had
pulled along without them for three years. He was incapable of
resentment, but it was still possible that habit had its way with
the missionary, and that, in his hour of success he had simply
forgotten them, as in his time of distress and failure they had
forgotten him. Who could blame him?
But all the little trouble of the past had melted from his mind and
heart; both were clear and happy when he rose, at last, to address
his people. His delicate lips had but parted to speak to them,
when there started such a storm of welcome from the fishermen as
well-nigh swept his self-possession from him. He was not prepared
for it, and he seemed almost disturbed. From aisle to aisle, from
wall to wall, the wind of sound rose and rolled upon him. At last
it became articulate, and here and there words defined themselves.
“God bless him!”
“Bless our dear young parson!”
“Windover fishermen stand by him every time!”
“Blessin’s on him, anyhow!”
“Christlove’s good enough for us!”
But when he smiled upon them, they grew quiet, as they had done
once before--that evening after the wreck and rescue off Ragged
Rock; for these two were the only occasions when the applause of
his people had got the better of their pastor.
When he began to speak, it was not without emotion, but in a voice
so low that the house had to hold its breath to hear him.
He began by thanking the fishermen of Windover for their trust and
their friendship. Both, he said, he valued, and more than they
would ever know. Of his own struggles and troubles, of the bitter
years that he had toiled among them, he said no word. He spoke
of the kindness of Windover, not of its neglect. He spoke of the
strength and the goodness of the city, rather than of its weakness
and its error. He spoke of the warm heart of the people, of their
readiness to help any need which they understood, and in whose
claim they believed. He told how generous they were in emergencies.
“You give money,” he said, “more lavishly than any town I have ever
known. When the gales have struck, and the fleets gone down, and
when, with widows and orphans starving on my heart and hands, I
have asked for bread, Windover has never given them a stone. Your
poor have spent themselves utterly upon your poorest, and your rich
have not refused. Windover gives gloriously,” said Bayard, “and I
am glad and proud to say so.”
Their faults, he told them, they had, and he was not there to
condone what he had never overlooked. One, above the rest, they had
to answer for; and what that was--did he need to name?
“It is not your sin alone,” he said firmly. “It is the sin of
seaport towns; it is the sin of cities; it is the sin of New
England; it is the sin of the Nation;--but _it is the sin of
Windover_, and my business is with Windover sins. I have fought
it since I came among you, without an hour’s wavering of purpose,
and without an hour’s fear of the result; and at all costs, at any
cost, I shall fight it till I go from you. For God has set me among
you, not to minister to your self-satisfaction, but to your needs.”
Bayard paused here, and regarded his people with a long look.
Their faces blurred before him for a moment, for his heart was
full. He saw them all, in the distinctness with which the public
speaker perceives familiar sights; every trifle upon the map of his
audience started out.
He saw Captain Hap, anxious and wrinkled, doing usher’s duty by the
door--Captain Hap, neither pious nor godless, but ready to live for
the parson or to die for him, and caring little which; the good
fellow, true with the allegiance of age and a loyal nature--dear
Captain Hap!
Bayard saw Job Slip, pale with the chronic pallor of the reformed
drunkard--poor Job, who drank not now, neither did he taste; but
bore the thirst of his terrible desert, trusting in the minister
and God Almighty,--in the succession of the phrase.
Mari was there, incapable and patient, her face and figure stamped
with the indefinable something that marks the drunkard’s wife. And
Joey, serious and old--little Joey! Bob was there, and Jean, and
Tony, and all the familiar faces from the wharves. Mrs. Granite, in
her rusty black, sat tearfully in a front settee, with Jane beside
her. Jane looked at the minister, before all the people, as she
never ventured to look at home. But nobody noticed Jane. Bayard
did but glance at her pinched, adoring face; he dared not dwell
upon it.
Ben Trawl was not to be seen in the audience. But Lena was. She
stood the service through, for she had come in too late to find
a seat; she stood behind Johnny’s mother, who wore Helen’s crape
bonnet and veil, poor old lady, with a brown bombazine dress. Lena
had a worried look. She did not remove her eyes from the preacher.
Lena sang that day, when the people started “the minister’s hymn,”--
“I need Thee every hour,
Stay Thou near by.”
Her fine voice rose like a solo; it had a certain solitariness
about it which was touching to hear.
“Temptations lose their power
When Thou art nigh.”
The melody of the hymn died away into the hush in which Bayard rose
again, for it came to his heart to bless his people and his chapel
in one of his rare prayers.
“Lord,” he said, “Thou art the God of the sea and its perils; of
the land and its sorrow. Draw near to these sea-people who tread
upon the shore of Thy mercy. I dedicate them to Thee. Father, take
them from my hands! Lift them up! Hold them, that they fall not.
Comfort their troubles. Forgive their sins. Take them! Take my
people from my heart!... Lord, I consecrate this house of worship,
for their sakes, and in Christ’s name, and for Christ’s love, to
Thee, and to Thy service.... Father! Thou knowest how I have loved
this people.”...
Bayard’s voice broke. It was the only time--in all those years. His
prayer remained unfinished. The sobs of his people answered him;
and his silence was his benediction upon them.
The audience moved out quietly. It was now dark. The lights in the
chapel had been noiselessly lighted. The jets of the illuminated
words above the door were blazing.
The Professor and the clergymen and Helen’s mother stepped apart
and out into the street; none of them spoke to Bayard, for his look
forbade them. The Professor of Theology was greatly moved. Signs of
tears more natural than evangelical were on his aged face. Bayard,
lingering but a moment, came down the aisle with his wife upon his
arm.
“Love,” she whispered, “it is over, and all is well.”
“Yes,” he answered, smiling, “it is over, and it is well.”
They came down and out upon the steps. Bayard stood uncovered
beneath the white and scarlet lights, which spelled the words,--
“THE LOVE OF CHRIST.”
He gave one glance down Angel Alley. It was packed; his people were
massed to protect him. Beyond them, marshaled into the darkness
and scarcely distinguishable from it, hovered certain sullen groups
of frowning men. Not a hand was raised. Not a cry was heard. No.
There was to be no mob. He had to meet, not violence, but mute and
serried Hate.
She clung to his arm with a start. She looked up into his face. Its
more than earthly radiance hushed the cry upon her lips. He was
transfigured before her. For that moment, all the people--they who
loved and they who loved him not--saw him glorified, there, beneath
the sacred words whose pure and blazing fires seemed to them the
symbol of his soul.
Then, from the darkest dark of Angel Alley a terrible oath split
the air. Something struck him; and he fell.