It was nearly two years after Sidney went forth to prepare for the
pastorate of Dole, when he stood one morning reading and re-reading the
brief words of a telegram:
Come at once. Mr. Didymus is dying.
VASHTI LANSING.
The old man had been failing fast since the springtime.
The first April showers were quickening the earth when one day Sally
found Mrs. Didymus dead in her chair, her Bible upon her knee, her
spectacles pushed up on her brow, her dead face turned to where upon the
wall hung a faded and discoloured portrait of Martha.
“It won’t be long now,” Mr. Didymus had said to Sidney upon that
occasion, and Sidney felt it would be cruel to contradict his hope.
All summer long as Sidney read Vashti’s accounts of the old man’s
fluctuating health he had thought of the solemn gladness of the moment
when the summons should come. His loins had been girded for months past
and now he was to set forth.
He had said to Vashti in a wistful letter, “When the hour comes be sure
you send for me yourself. Let it be your personal summons which brings me
to your side.” And now such a summons lay before him.
He had no preparations to make. All that required to be done could be
arranged afterwards. But, ere he set out for the new life, he had one
visit to pay. He had always promised himself that when the hour came he
would not taste of its joy till he had gone to the man of whom he had
thought during the first gladness of his engagement.
Surely it was a curious thing that a minister of the Gospel should seek
counsel of an unlearned agnostic. Nevertheless Sidney went confidently.
At each step he took towards his destination he grew more and more
ashamed for that he had so long withdrawn himself from this man.
Sidney found him in his old place amid the whirring wheels of the great
factory in which he worked. His grizzled hair was a trifle greyer, his
strong figure a little more bent; but his clear cut mouth was as firm
as ever, his eyes as wistful and eager. They had that expression of
receptiveness which so often marks the true sage, who, very wise, is yet
always eager to learn.
Between the sliding belts Sidney encountered his delighted gaze fixed
straight upon him. The visitor threading his way with difficulty through
the maze of machinery to where he stood with such a welcome in his eyes
that Sidney’s impulse had been to brave the wheels and go straight.
“How I wanted to come and meet you,” said the man, holding out a begrimed
hand eagerly. “But you know my hand must be on the lever always.”
“Ah,” said Sidney, “I felt your welcome even before I saw you, and when I
saw you formalities were discounted.”
The man looked at him, a shade of awe solemnizing the gladness of his
face.
“There are some things which almost frighten one,” he said. “Do you know
that all day long I have been thinking of you, remembering the lectures
you used to give us at the Shelley Club and wondering if I should ever,
ever hear from you again?”
“And now I am here!” said Sidney.
“Yes,” said the man, looking at him lovingly. “And it is so good to see
you.”
In the midst of his happiness Sidney remembered to say “And how does the
Shelley Club progress? Are you president yet?” The man shifted his feet
awkwardly.
“Yes, I am,” he said.
“Ah, the right man in the right place,” said Sidney cordially. “So the
club goes on?”
“Yes, we have nineteen members now and there are often fifty at the
meetings.”
“There’s a stride!” said Sidney. “We used to be proud of ourselves if
we could say ‘we are seven,’ didn’t we? Well, I would like to hear your
addresses.”
“You have some news to give me, I am sure,” said the man, who, during the
conversation manipulated his lever with the mechanical precision of a man
whom practice has made almost automatic.
Sidney flushed.
“Could you come out for a few minutes’ quiet talk?” he asked.
“I shall see,” said the man, turning a knob which arrested the wheels.
He went to a man almost as grimy as himself, but who wore a coat. Sidney
looked about him with shuddering disgust at the surroundings.
The machinery beside him shivered with the suppressed energy kept in
check by the knob the man had turned. It seemed to Sidney a symbol of the
eager soul of the man whom he had come to see, prisoned by circumstances
within the circumference of petty cares, yet quivering and throbbing with
divine energy.
The man was returning pleased with the little boon of time he had gained.
The circumstances gripped Sidney’s heart. He felt his own freedom and
ease a reproach.
The man led the way, turning down the sleeves of his grey flannel shirt.
He passed broad-shouldered between the whizzing belts, one touch of which
meant mutilation. Sidney edged his way gingerly after him. The spaces
between the whirling wheels seemed very narrow.
The workman led the way out into a desolate but sunny little courtyard.
A high wall enclosed it; great heaps of packing cases filled one corner;
a freight car, run in upon a little row of rails, stood just within the
gate.
“Sit down,” said the man, waving Sidney to a place upon a pile of boards.
It struck Sidney that there was a sense of luxury in the way in which he
let his frame relax; it was an unaccustomed treat, evidently, these few
moments stolen in the midst of the sunshiny forenoon.
“Now for your news,” said the man. “Is it about yourself?”
“Yes,” said Sidney, “and it will surprise you greatly. I am about to
become, in fact already am, a Minister.”
“Of what—to whom—where?” asked the man.
“A preacher of the Christian gospel,” said Sidney. “To a pious little
community in the New England hills.”
There was silence for a moment. The whirr of the wheels came to them,
they heard a postman’s whistle in the street outside and the chirping of
some sparrows which fluttered about the empty car.
“You are disappointed,” said Sidney; “you disapprove, but——”
The man raised his hand.
“It’s for a woman, I suppose,” he said. “Would nothing satisfy her but
your soul?”
“Oh,” cried Sidney, “I will do my duty by them. I will preach the truth
to them. They shall know how noble and lovely life may be. They shall be
shown what real beauty is, and told that righteousness for righteousness’
sake is the highest good.”
His friend sat silent still; Sidney looked at him almost pleadingly, and
saw that his eyes were blurred by tears.
“Listen,” he said to Sidney. “Give it up. You don’t know what you are
doing. It will kill you. I know you so well. You are salving your
conscience now by good resolutions. When you see the fruitlessness of it
all you will torture yourself with thoughts of your responsibility and
what not, and the end will be chaos.”
“Do you think I have not nearly gone mad already?” said Sidney, growing
very white. “Surely you must guess how I have questioned my ability to
do them good. But I think the worst of that is past now. I shall have a
stay, a support, an inspiration which will never flag. The most beautiful
and best woman in the world has promised to marry me the day I become
minister of Dole.”
“I’ve heard of the devil baiting his line with a woman,” said the workman
contemptuously, but yet in such a manner that Sidney could not take
offence. Then he went on:—
“You say you’ll do your duty by these people, but it’s not that I’m
thinking about. It’s you. Remember this, you are to work in the vineyard
of human nature, its soil is the shifting quicksand of human weakness.
When you feel that sucking you down, to what will you turn? Upon what
secret source of strength can you draw? Do you think the men who preach
the Christ word in the slums could live and eat and continue their work
unless they drew strength from some unseen reservoir? No, a thousand
times no. Of course, I think their belief a delusion, but it is real to
them, as real as the Divinity of Truth, and Truth alone, is to me. To
preach a personal God without belief in one is to court destruction; at
any moment, by disappointment or self-reproach, you may be thrown back
upon your own beliefs. Shall the mother whom you have denied open her
arms to you? Or shall the personal God in whom you do not believe sustain
you? No, you will fall into the void. Sidney, give it up.”
There was a pause.
“I will never give it up,” he said. “I have promised that I shall devote
myself to the work, and I will. You speak as if I had denied Nature and
spat upon Truth. I have done neither. These two things will bear me
through. There was one night in the fields—there was a new moon, and the
young grain was springing. I saw things very clearly just then. I felt I
could do good, and that it was my bounden duty to try. Bid me good-speed.”
The workman rose. He took Sidney’s hand and pressed it in both of his.
“I think,” he said, “no human being ever began a hopeless course with
more sincere and honest good wishes.” As he held Sidney’s hands and
looked into the grey eyes of the younger man his own keen eyes dimmed and
grew seerlike. The look of the visionary illumined his face.
“You will toil and strive and suffer,” he said. “You will spend and be
spent for others. You will have griefs, but you will never realise them,
for you will be too absorbed in the sorrows of others to feel your own.
You have bound yourself to a wheel, and until you are broken upon it, and
your spirit spilt into the bosom of the Eternal, you will never know you
have been tortured.”
A half sob arrested his speech.
“Good-bye,” he said, “good-bye!”
“Good-bye,” said Sidney, who was much moved. So the two men parted. The
one went into the sunshine; the other back into the hot atmosphere,
where the deleterious dust was eddied into maelstroms by the whirling
wheels.
The one murmured, “Vashti, Vashti”; the other, as he oiled the wheels
and bent strenuously over his work, thought long and sorrowfully of
many things. It chanced to be the meeting-night of the Free Thinking
Vegetarian Club, of which he was president, and in his little speech
he said much of a man who bartered his soul for a mess of pottage. But
he told the story in such fashion that this man seemed to shine as an
unselfish hero before their eyes, instead of as a weakling, spendthrift
of a precious heritage of independence.
Thus an author has sometimes such wholesome charity for his villains that
we love them more than their betters.
As Sidney was borne towards Dole that day, he relived as in a vision all
the events which followed that first haphazard visit of his. And yet,
could such a vital event be born of chance?
How well he recalled the peculiar fancy he had had when Dr. Clement,
after his visit to the country, gave him old Mr. Lansing’s invitation.
It was as if a little bell set swinging in his father’s boyhood had
suddenly tinkled in his ear, bidding him turn in his youth to those
scenes where his father had been a boy.
He remembered the day when dear old Temperance first opened the door
to him. He knew now the enormity of his going direct to the front door.
In Dole only ministers and funerals went there. Sidney never really
acquired the etiquette of the Dole doors. One has to be born in a court
to properly appreciate its etiquette.
With epicurean delay the gentle stream of his recollections took him down
the road, past Mullein meadow (O! place of promise!), to the “unction
sale,” at Abiron Ranger’s, and then his memory leaped the bounds, swept
aside intervening incidents, and dwelt upon the glorified vision of
beautiful Vashti. Ah! “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Then followed his long visit with its rhythmic lapse of happy days.
Then, the Holy Grail of her heart had been won.
And afterwards came the long waiting. The short visits to Dole. And now!
The marriage of Mabella and Lanty had taken place a month or so after
Sidney left Dole the first time. Their little daughter Dorothy was more
than a year old now.
Temperance and Nathan were not yet married, but three months before
Temperance had bought a new black cashmere dress in Brixton, and Nathan
was known to have priced a china tea set, with gilt rosebuds in the
bottoms of the cups. Dole felt, therefore, that matters were approaching
a crisis with Temperance and Nathan.
Old Mr. Lansing had grown very frail. He had had a stroke of paralysis,
and had never been the same man again. His eyes always had an
apprehensive look which was very painful to witness; and strangely
enough this quiet, self-contained old man, who all his life had seemed
so content with the little village where he was born, so scornfully
unconscious of the world which fretted and throbbed beyond its quiet
boundaries, now showed a great eagerness for word from the outside. He
subscribed to several newspapers. And when Sidney came the old man would
question him with persistent and pathetic eagerness about the details of
different events which he had seen chronicled with big typed headings,
and Sidney found himself often sore at heart because he knew nothing
whatever about the matter. American journalism has some grave flaws in
its excellence, and surely the hysterical lack of all sense of proportion
and perspective in presenting the picture of the times is a deplorable
thing. It does grave and positive harm in the rural districts where it
is impossible for the people to gauge the statements by comparison with
events.
Sidney was greatly touched by the misconception of old Mr. Lansing in
regard to these things.
“Ah,” said the old man once, laying down the paper in which he had read
a grotesquely exaggerated account of some political caucus which was
made to appear like a meeting of the national powers, “Ah, there’s no
wonder dear old Sid went to Bosting.” He shook his head and sat with his
elbows upon his chair, looking before him into vacancy. What fanciful
vista of possibilities did he look upon? What vague regrets beset his
mind? To Sidney this was unspeakably pitiful. This old man with his young
dreams—and it was the more sad, inasmuch as the dreamer himself knew
their futility.
Old Lansing had always been a “forehanded” man with his work. He had
never left over one season’s duties till another, but he had forgotten to
dream in his youth, and now he was striving in his age to overtake the
neglected harvests of his garden of fancy.
* * * * *
When the train stopped at Brixton the first person whom Sidney saw was
Lanty. Lanty tall and strong, and debonair as ever. He greeted Sidney
very heartily.
“You’ve come for keeps this time,” he said, as he led the way to where
the roan, a trifle more sedate than formerly, stood waiting between the
shafts of a very spick-and-span buggy.
“We will go straight to the preacher’s,” said Lanty. “I hope we’ll be in
time.”
“Is he so low?”
“Dying,” said Lanty simply. He touched the roan with the reins and it
sprang forward. Sidney’s heart fled before. The landscape upon either
side stretched dimly before his eyes. He was conscious that Lanty was
speaking to him, and he made suitable replies. But all his mind was
glamoured by one thought, for Vashti had promised that Mr. Didymus should
marry them.
Was this then THE DAY?
They passed Lanty’s house, a square building with heavily timbered porch,
and Lanty drew rein to call “Mabella, Mabella!” But there was no reply.
“She must have gone into Dole,” said he, and once more they went on. Ere
long they were driving up the streets of Dole. The women stood at the
doorways with elaborate pretence of being occupied. The men endeavoured
to infuse surprise into their recognition of Sidney, although most of
them had purposely elected to stay in the village “choring” around the
house instead of going to the fields or the woods.
The wise wives of Dole, knowing the amiable weakness of their husbands,
had preferred special requests that day to have work done about the
house. In Dole a man always thought he was conferring a personal favour
upon his wife if he straightened up a leaning garden fence, mended a
doorstep, or banked up a cellar for winter. There were six cellars banked
up in Dole on the day when Sidney entered it. Upon the spring air the
odour of fresh-turned earth speaks of new ploughed fields and fresh
harvests, but in autumn the earthy smell is chill and drear, and brings
with it a sense of mortality, a hint of the end. And this atmosphere hung
heavy over the little village as Sidney entered it.
As the buggy drawn by the roan horse passed, the ranks of Dole closed up.
That is, each woman crossed to her neighbour, and the men rested from
their labours to discuss the arrival.
There was one thing that never was forgotten about Sidney’s entry—a
circumstance viewed severely by the many, leniently by the few—he wore
a grey suit of clothes. Dole murmured in its heart at this infringement
of the ministerial proprieties, but Dole was destined to experience a
succession of such shocks, for its young and eager pastor trod often upon
the outspread skirts of its prejudices.
Sidney himself was profoundly moved as he drove up the street, for he
was entering the precincts of his holy city. In the geography of the
heart there are many cities. There is the place where we were born; the
place of our dreams; the Rome which under one guise or another fills the
foreground of our ambitions; and above all there is the place where first
we tasted of love, ah, that is where the Temple Beautiful stands. And
Sidney’s first and only love had been born in Dole.
Eager eyes were watching for them from the parsonage windows; Mabella,
the habitual happiness of her face masked and subdued by tender-hearted
concern; Mrs. Ranger, a bustling important woman of many airs and graces,
filled with a sense of her own importance, and knowing that her every
action would be reported to Temperance Tribbey (her sworn enemy) by
Mabella; Mr. Simpson who had nursed Mr. Didymus from the beginning; and,
waiting alone and silently in the tiny hall upstairs, Vashti Lansing.
She saw the two men coming up the street, side by side in the buggy,
and her heart leaped up and cried for the one who was denied her. Again
an angry gust of passion shook her as she looked. For the one moment
her decision wavered. That pale slight man whose grey eyes were so
eager, so alight with hope and love, was nothing to her compared to the
blue-eyed, fair-haired young countryman. Why should she condemn herself
to the torture of the continual contrast? But this way her revenge lay,
unplanned yet, but so eagerly desired. She would surely, surely find some
means to make them feel her power when as the preacher’s wife she was
First Lady in Dole. So Vashti Lansing, filled with Samson-like courage
to wreck her enemies at any price, slowly descended the stairs as Sidney
entered the front door. Then she went towards him.
Mabella saw them and with adroit sympathy endeavoured to detain Mrs.
Ranger in the kitchen. But that worthy woman saw through Mabella’s
artifice, and leaving her question unanswered made for the door which
led from the kitchen into the little front hall; whereupon Mabella
deliberately placed herself in Mrs. Ranger’s way, and animated by the
courage which springs from consciousness of a good cause, dodged every
attempt of that irate person to pass her. Mrs. Ranger endured this as
long as she could, then, without more ado, she put out a strong arm and
brushed Mabella aside. “Take care,” she said and passed into the hall.
But Sidney had had his greeting, and Vashti’s calm face baffled her
inquiring looks.
“I could see there had been something,” she said in reporting the matter,
“but what had happened I don’t know.”
“My sakes,” said Mrs. Simpson, when Mrs. Ranger told her this, “I’m sure
you _must_ have been busy in the kitchen if you couldn’t spare time to
watch ’em meet. My soul! If Len was worth his salt for observation he’d
have kep’ his eyes open. But sakes! Men’s that stoopid——. But with you
there I thought we’d know how things was goin’——”
“Well,” said Mrs. Ranger tartly, “you can thank Mabella Lansing for
that. First as I was going out she ups and asks me a question. I paid no
attention to that for I knew ’twas done to hinder (them Lansings is all
in the same boat), and then when she seen I wasn’t to be took in with
that she deliberately put herself in the way, and dodged me back and
forward till I had all I could do to keep from giving her a good shove.”
“Well, M’bella Lansing had better look out. It’s a bad thing to be set
up. Pride goes before a fall. And M’bella’s certainly most wonderful sure
of self. But Lanty wouldn’t be the first young chap to——. Of course I
ain’t sayin’ anything, but they do say——”
Mrs. Ranger waited eagerly to see if her friend would commit herself to a
definite statement. But Mrs. Simpson was much too wary for that; so Mrs.
Ranger nodded her head, and pursed up her lips, and managed to convey the
impression that “she could an’ she would” unfold a tale.
But this was some days after Sidney met Vashti in the narrow hall of the
Dole parsonage.
“I am here, Vashti,” he whispered, kissing her.
“Yes, how glad I am!” she answered simply.
“Can I speak to you just a moment, dear, before I go to see him?”
“What is it?”
“Do you remember,” he whispered hurriedly, “that you promised old Mr.
Didymus that he should marry us? Vashti, I have waited so long. I tremble
before the responsibility of the life I have chosen. Strengthen me with
the fulfilment of your promise to better keep mine.”
Just then Mr. Simpson came in.
“He’s askin’ if you be come yet,” he said to Sidney. “I—wouldn’t wait
long before seein’ him if I was you; he’s sinkin’.”
“I will come in at once,” said Sidney. Mr. Simpson turned and re-entered
the sick room.
Sidney turned to Vashti. At that moment Mrs. Ranger, flushed and a little
ruffled by her combat with Mabella, entered the hall.
“How d’ye do, Mr. Martin?” she said, holding out her hand. “We’d be right
glad t’ see you if the time wasn’t so sad.”
“I am pleased to see you,” said Sidney, in his gentle genial way, shaking
hands with her. She looked from his face to Vashti’s with an almost
ridiculously eager scrutiny, but found herself baffled.
“You’d better go right in and see Mr. Didymus,” she said. “He’s bin
askin’ for you.” At this juncture Mabella appeared, an adorably matronly
Mabella.
“How are you, Sidney?” she asked. “Mrs. Ranger, I’m afraid your pies are
burning or running over or something, I smelt them.”
“Laws,” said that good woman, disappearing like a shot. “Didn’t you have
sense enuff to go to the oving instead o’ coming t’ me?”
“If you want to talk,” said Mabella coolly to Sidney and Vashti, “go into
the sitting-room, and when she comes back I’ll tell her you’ve gone in to
see Mr. Didymus.”
“You’re an angel,” said Sidney, and drew Vashti through the doorway just
as Mrs. Ranger came back angrily.
“Them pies ain’t half cooked,” she said, “let alone burning!”
“Well, I’m sure I thought I smelt them,” said Mabella, “and I know you
didn’t want to leave the pie-making for Temperance to do when she came
this evening.”
“If the pies had burned I’d have made others, depend on that,” said Mrs.
Ranger. “I guess Temp’rins Tribbey never had to do anything over after
me! I s’pose he’s gone in to see Mr. Didymus now?”
“We may as well go,” said Mabella. “He won’t be back for awhile likely.”
So the two went back to the kitchen, where Lanty, after watering the
roan, stood eating biscuits from the heap upon the bake board.
“Vashti,” said Sidney, taking her in his arms, “say yes. You know I adore
you—and—Vashti, you will——”
She looked into his eyes. For one moment a womanly hesitation prevailed
in her heart. The next she questioned herself angrily: “Why wait, why
delay, why not begin to lay the threads of your revenge?”
“But”—she paused and looked down. He drew her closer.
“Darling, it is the knowledge that you are really mine that I want. You
surely do not think I would be exacting to you? You shall come to me when
you will; say yes, dear——”
“It is so hurried—so—you _are_ good,” she said, with charming affectation
of hesitancy.
“Send Lanty over for your father,” said Sidney, “and Temperance and I
will go in and ask Mr. Didymus.”
“I—yes, Sidney, I will do as you wish,” she said, then for one instant,
abashed by the great glad light in his eyes, she let fall her face upon
his breast.
“And Vashti—after—you won’t keep me waiting too long.”
She looked at him, arch rebuke in her eyes.
He reddened.
“There,” he said, “I’m spoiling it all I know. Go, dear, and send Lanty.”
She moved away a step. He followed her swiftly and caught her to his
breast with passion.
“Tell me, Vashti,” he said, “that you love me as I love you; tell me that
life together seems the only thing possible to you.” She put her arms
about his neck.
“I love you dearly,” she said, “I could not look forward to life except
with you.”
With those words and with the embrace of her soft warm arms, every doubt
or shadow died in Sidney’s heart. He returned her embrace, too moved to
speak, and left her to enter the room of the dying man.
Vashti went to the kitchen door and called her cousin.
“Lanty,” she said, “will you come a moment?”
He left Mabella and came to her.
“Come outside,” she said, “I want you to do something for me.” Then as
they got beyond Mrs. Ranger’s hearing she continued: “I want you to go
over and fetch father and Temperance. Sidney is bent upon being married
by Mr. Didymus and—I have consented.” There was a kind of agony in the
regard she gave Lanty. “Will you go?” she said; her voice sounded far
away to herself, and all at once it seemed to her as if she could hear
the blood rushing through her veins, with a roaring as of mill-streams.
And Lanty, all unconscious of this, stood smiling before her. Truly, if
Vashti Lansing sinned, she also suffered.
“It’s a capital idea,” said Lanty heartily. “You are a lucky girl,
Vashti. I’ll go at once; have you told Mabella yet?”
The pent-up forces of Vashti’s heart leaped almost beyond the bounds.
“Go,” she said, with a strange sweet shrillness in her voice. “Go, at
once.”
“I will, of course, I will,” said Lanty, and he suited the action to the
word. He paused an instant to tell Mabella, and added: “You go and talk
to Vashti, she’s as nervous as you were.”
Then he departed and Vashti watched him, wondering a little why she had
been born to such a perverse fate. As she turned from the empty distance
where he had disappeared it was to be met by Mabella’s arms, and kisses,
and congratulations, and exclamations. Poor Mabella! All was so well
meant, and surely we would not blame her; and yet, though a creature be
worthy of death, we do not like to see it tormented and baited. Vashti
Lansing, with her lawless will, her arrogant self-confidence, her evil
determination, was yet to be pitied that day.
The short autumnal day had drawn down to night. Lamps twinkled from every
room in the parsonage. A great stillness brooded over the house.
The kitchen was filled with whispering women, groups of men lingered near
the house and horses were tied here and there to the palings. The word
had gone abroad that the old man who prayed for them so long was leaving
them that night. There would be little sleep in Dole during its hours.
“The license has come,” whispered Mabella to Temperance, and Temperance
slipped out from among the women and found Nathan where he loitered by
the door.
Soon they were all gathered in the sick room. Old Lansing, and Mabella,
and Lanty with their baby Dorothy in his arms, and Temperance and Nathan,
and another guest, unseen and silent, to whom they all did reverence, who
was nearer to the old clergyman than any of them.
And in a moment the door opened, and Sidney and Vashti came softly in,
both pale, both calm.
The old clergyman looked up at them lovingly. His face was the colour of
ivory, and the spirit seemed to shine through its imprisoning tabernacle
like a light.
In few and feeble words he married them. Then he essayed to speak a
little to them, but he stumbled and faltered, and instead of saying,
“You, Vashti,” he said “You, Martha,” and when he sought to find Sidney’s
name he could only say “Len.”
The composure of the women gave way. Mabella buried her face in Lanty’s
arm and cried unrestrainedly. Tears streamed over Lanty’s face also.
Those words, Martha and Len, showed how lovingly, despite his stern
denial of their suit, the old man had thought of his daughter and her
sweetheart.
His voice wandered and failed. Sidney and Vashti knelt beside the bed.
Temperance stole forward and touching them, motioned for them to go.
As they rose the old man looked at them. A little bewilderment flickered
into his eyes.
“It’s not Martha and Len”—then his eyes cleared. “I am going to them and
the mother.” Then he looked at Sidney, “Be thou faithful unto death,” he
said, the solemnity of the words gaining an incalculable force from the
weakness of the voice. Then he began to murmur to himself, “I have fought
the good fight, I have finished my course.”
Dr. Harrow and Mr. Simpson entered the room, and the others quitted it,
and hardly were they gone ere the unseen guest stole out from the shadows
and looked into the old man’s eyes. There was neither fear nor reluctance
in them, nothing but welcome, and a trust which was transcendent; and in
a few moments the unseen guest folded the longing spirit of the old man
in a strong embrace and bore it to where “beyond these voices there is
peace.”
Thus Sidney was married. Thus the mantle of the pastorate of Dole fell
upon his shoulders.