A DEMON.
Madge Finisterre awoke early on the morning after that discussion with
herself anent Hammond’s possible proposal.
With startling suddenness, as she lay still a moment, a vision of the
pastor of Balhang came up before her mind. Then a strange thing happened
to her, for a yearning sense of home-sickness suddenly filled her.
She tried to laugh at herself for her “childishness,” as she called it,
and sprang from her bed to prepare for her bath. Standing for one instant
by the bedside, she murmured:
“But, after all, it is time I was paddling across again. Who ever heard
of anyone from our side staying here through the winter? I must think
this all out seriously. Anyway, I’ll get my bath, and dress, and go for a
stroll before breakfast. They say that one ought to see suburban London
pouring over the bridges into London city in the early morning. I’ll go
this morning.”
Half-an-hour later she was dressed ready for her expedition. As she
passed the office on her way out, they were sorting the morning mail. She
waited for her letters. There was only one, but it was from home.
Racing back to her room, she tore it open with an eagerness born,
unconsciously to herself, of the nostalgia that had seized upon her
three-quarters of an hour before.
There were two large, closely-written sheets in the letter—one from her
father and one from her mother. Each told their own news.
She read her father’s first; every item interested her, though as she
read she seemed to feel that there was all through it an underlying
strain of longing for her return.
“Dear old poppa!” she murmured as she neared the finish of the epistle.
Suddenly her eyes took in the two lines of postscript jammed close into
the bottom edge of the first sheet. Her heart seemed to stand still as
she read:—
“Pastor is considered sick. Doctor can’t make his case out.”
“Pastor sick!” She gasped the words aloud; then, turning swiftly to her
mother’s letter, she cried: “Momma will tell more than this!”
Her eyes raced over the written lines. Her mother said a little more than
her father had done about the sickness of their friend and pastor; not
much, though, in actual words, but to the disturbed heart of the young
girl there seemed to her much deeper meaning.
An excited trembling came upon her for a few moments. The next instant
she had put a strong curb upon herself, and, folding the letters, and
replacing them in the envelope, she cried out quietly, but sharply:
“The boat from Southampton sails at two to-day. I’ll catch that!”
The next instant she was divesting herself of her hat and jacket, and
began to set about her packing.
Now and again she talked to herself thus: “Sick, is he? Poor old pastor!
I guess I know what’s the matter with him, and I’ll put him right in five
minutes.”
She smiled as she went on: “I guess, too, I’ve found out what’s the
matter with me—I want to be a pastor’s wife!”
The next instant her voice was carolling out:
“For I tell them they need not come wooing of me,
For my heart, my heart, is over the sea.”
Her fingers were busy, her mind all the time kept mentally arranging a
host of things.
“I wonder,” she murmured presently, “how Uncle Archibald and George will
take my sudden departure? Well, I’m glad George is out of town. He’s been
showing signs of spoons lately with me, so it’s best, perhaps, that I
should get off without seeing him.”
* * * * *
By eleven that forenoon she had left Waterloo. Her uncle had seen her
off from the station. He wanted to accompany her to Southampton, but she
would not hear of it.
“I want to be very quiet all the way down,” she said, “and write some
important letters. Make my excuses to everybody, and explain that I only
had an hour or two to do everything.”
At the last moment her uncle slipped an envelope into her hand, saying,
“You are not to open it until you have been travelling a quarter of an
hour.”
Then came the good-byes, and—off.
She had been travelling _nearly_ a quarter of an hour when she opened the
envelope. There was a brief, hearty, loving note inside, in her uncle’s
hand-writing, expressing the joy her visit had given him, and his sense
of loneliness at her going, and saying:
“Please, dear Madge, accept the enclosure in second envelope,
as a souvenir of your visit, from your affectionate
“NUNKUMS.”
She opened the smaller envelope. To her breathless amazement, she found a
Bank of England note for £1,000. When she recovered herself a little, a
smile filled her eyes as she murmured:
“Fancy an American Methodist pastor’s wife with a thousand pounds of her
own! My!”
The train was rushing on; she remembered that she had a special letter to
write. She opened her bag and took out writing materials. The carriage
rocked tremendously, but she managed to pen her letter. Before she
finally enclosed the letter in an envelope, she took from her purse a
two-inch cutting from the columns of some newspaper or magazine. This she
placed in the letter.
* * * * *
Tom Hammond had just settled himself down to work when a letter, bearing
the Southampton post-mark, was delivered to him. Opening it, and
reading “My dear Mr. Hammond,” he turned next to the signature. “Madge
Finisterre?” he cried softly, surprisedly, under his breath. Wonderingly
he turned back to the first page, and read:
“You will be surprised to know that when you receive this I shall be
steaming down Channel _en route_ for New York. I got letters from home
this morning that made it imperative that I should start at once.
“I cannot leave without thanking you for all your kindness to me. It has
been a pleasure to have known you, and I sincerely hope that we may meet
again some day.
“Now I am going to take you right into my confidence, Mr. Hammond, for
who so discreet as a ‘prophet?’—vide ‘The Courier.’
“Yesterday evening, after dinner, I had a long talk alone with myself.
I had had a very pleasant tete-a-tete tea with a friend—perhaps you may
remember this,—and while I went over in mind many things in connection
with that tete-a-tete, especially the events immediately preceding the
interruption, I suddenly realized a sense of longing for home.
“A night or two before I sailed from America, our pastor asked me to be
his wife. He was awfully in earnest, poor fellow; and I could see how
love for me—gay, frivolous little me—was consuming him. I was startled
at the proposition, and told him frankly that I did not know my own
mind, but that if ever I found out that I loved him, I would come right
away and tell him so. I found out this morning, when I heard that he was
dangerously sick, that I wanted him as much as ever he wanted me. At this
stage of the letter, please read the cutting enclosed.”
Wondering what the clipping could have to do with the subject, Tom
Hammond laid down the letter and read the cutting:
“A king had a son born to him in his old age, and was warned by his
astrologers and physicians, that his son would be blind if he ever saw
the light before he was twelve years old. Accordingly the king built
for him a subterranean chamber, where he was kept till he was past the
fatal age. Thereupon he was taken out from his retreat, and shown all
the beauties of the world, gold and jewels and arms, and carriages and
horses, and beautiful dresses. But seeing some women pass, he asked what
they might be, and was told, ‘Demons, who lead men astray.’ Afterwards
the king asked him which of all the beautiful things he had seen he
desired most, and the prince answered, ‘The demons which lead men astray.’
“I am going back to be demon to my pastor,” the letter went on, “to lead
him—not astray, I trust, but back to health. Please keep all this in
absolute confidence, for I have not given even a hint of it to my uncle.
Whenever you visit the States, be sure to come and visit me, for no one
will be more welcome from the Old Country than yourself.
“By-the-bye, dear friend, apropos of your remark anent the presence of
a woman to make tea for you, keep the subject well before yourself, and
when you see the lady who can really satisfy all your ideals, propose
quickly, secure her, and—happy thought—do America by way of a honey-moon,
and come and see me.
“Yours most sincerely,
“MADGE FINISTERRE.”
He smiled as he laid down the letter. For a moment all the bright,
piquant personality of the writer filled his vision. Then, with a
swiftness and completeness that was almost startling, her face vanished
from his mental picturing, and Zillah Robart, in all her radiant
loveliness, took the place in his thought and vision.
For a brief while he was absorbed in his new vision. The sudden entrance
of Ralph Bastin dispelled his dreaming.
After a few moments’ talk, Bastin cried, quite excitedly, “I say, Tom,
those pars of yours about the Jews are the talk of all London—our London,
I mean, of course.”
Without breaking the confidence reposed in him by Cohen, Tom Hammond told
his friend what he had recently discovered as to the Jewish work on the
materials for the New Temple.
“That’s strange, Tom,” returned Bastin. “I dropped in now as much as
anything to tell you that last night I met Dolly Anstruther—you remember
her, don’t you?—the little Yorkshire girl that was learning sculpture
when we were staying at Paris with Montmarte.
“She has just come back from Italy, where she has been three years. She
told me how startled she was to hear from several sources about this New
Temple business. She said she visited a very large studio in Milan, and
saw the most magnificent pillar she had ever seen. She asked the great
artist what it was for, and he said, ‘It is a pillar for the New Temple
at Jerusalem.’
“In Rome she visited another great studio, and there she saw a duplicate
of the Milan pillar, and was told again, ‘Oh, that is a pillar for the
future Temple at Jerusalem.’
“In another place, where the most wonderful brass-work in the world is
turned out, she saw two magnificent gates; and, on inquiring where they
were destined to be hung, received the same reply, ‘In the future Temple
at Jerusalem.’ What does it all mean, Tom?” he added.
“That is what I want to find out, to be perfectly sure of, Ralph. My
intelligent Jew, of whom I told you, declares that the Messiah is coming.
We, as Christians—nominal Christians, I mean, of course,—same as you and
I, Ralph, don’t profess anything more——”
Bastin searched his friend’s face with a sudden keenness, but did not
interrupt him by asking him what he meant.
“As nominal Christians,” Tom Hammond went on, “we believe the Christ
has already come. But the question has been aroused in my mind of late
(suggested by certain things that I have not time to go into now), does
the Bible teach that Christ is coming again, and are all these strange
movings among the Jews and in the politics of the world so many signs
and——”
There came an interruption at that moment. The tape was telling of the
assassination of a Continental crowned head. Both men became journalists,
pure and simple, in an instant.