The two weeks that were to pass before the day that was to be the
Day of Days were very full.
To get parish work ahead so that things would run themselves for
the month’s absence which had been granted the clergyman was
no small undertaking. William West was very busy, and a little
preoccupied in his endeavor to put his best thought, not upon his
own happiness, but upon committees, or Sunday-school matters, or
his assistant’s spiritual anxieties concerning his superior’s
indifference to the color of the lectern bookmarks; so it chanced
that he saw less of Amy than in the earlier part of their
engagement. He had but little time to think of her, and absolutely
no time to think of himself.
They were to be married on Thursday. Late Monday afternoon Mr.
West, with great timidity, ventured into Mrs. Paul’s drawing-room,
with the bold purpose of abstracting his sweetheart for a walk. The
project was, of course, promptly crushed.
“As though Amy had any time for that sort of thing!” said Mrs.
Paul. “Do you see those presents? She has got to acknowledge every
one of them! Amy, your cousin John and I will entertain Mr. West.
You can write your notes here, and let him look at you; that’s
quite enough for him.”
Amy smiled at him across a barricade of silver bric-à-brac.
“Billy thinks silver picture-frames and brushes and things are a
dreadful waste of money,” she said. “Just think how thankful you
ought to be, Billy, that I am making our manners for you; you
couldn’t say ‘Thank you,’ with truth.”
“Oh, truth,” said John Paul, lounging about the room, with his
hands in his pockets--“truth, my dear little cousin, is governed by
the law of benefit; didn’t you know that? If it makes the donors
feel happy, tell them West has longed for nothing in the world so
much as a silver glove buttoner. Now, if you told them the truth,
fancy the shock! Ask the Parson.”
“The Parson has no such base and cynical theory,” Miss Townsend
responded promptly; “have you, Billy? You don’t think truth is
governed by the law of benefit?”
“I think truth-telling is,” he assured her.
John Paul assumed that look of artless and simpering satisfaction
which one sees on the countenance of the unprotected male, who, in
the bosom of his family, finds himself indorsed by a higher power.
“There, Amy, what did I tell you? I had an instance of it
yesterday. I”--
“Oh, here is a third asparagus fork,” murmured Amy; “what _shall_ I
say about it?”
“What’s your instance?” said the minister.
“Well, we’ve been looking for an assistant engineer, and there
have been the Lord only knows how many applicants. One fellow
impressed me very well; he seemed as straight as a string; honest
face, thoroughly decent-looking fellow. He was an Englishman, but
his references for three years were American. So much the better,
of course. I was going to engage him, when, bless my soul, if he
didn’t begin to stammer out something about having no references
from ‘Home’ (‘’ome,’ he called it), because he ‘’adn’t been over
steady,’ but he’d signed the pledge, and ‘he wasn’t afraid of drink
any more.’ I didn’t hire him. Now, I call that truth not governed
by the law of benefit.”
“You don’t discriminate between being truthful and telling the
truth,” said William West. “You hadn’t asked him if he had ever
drank. I don’t believe you lost much, in not engaging him, poor
fellow.”
“Oh, Billy, I think it was rather fine in him,” Amy protested,
looking up from her notes.
“I don’t see anything fine,” the minister said simply. “In the
first place, there was a lack of reserve, a lack of privacy, in
rushing into confession, which betrays the weak nature. There was
also self-consciousness, in dwelling on his sin. And in the third
place”--
“This sounds like a sermon: firstly--secondly”--Amy murmured,
signing her name to her thanks for the third asparagus fork.
--“in the third place, if the man has reformed, there was an
essential untruth in posing as a sinner.”
“Well, I don’t quite agree with that,” began Mrs. Paul.
“He’s right; he’s right,” John Paul declared. “I say, West, suppose
we went about confessing some of our college performances?” The
senior warden of St. James grinned, but his wife looked displeased.
“I don’t believe you ever did anything very bad, John; but if you
did, I think you should have confessed to me.”
“I stole some signs, Kate,” he told her; “can you forgive me?”
Amy, listening, smiling, said with that charming sidewise glance at
her lover: “Cousin Kate is quite right. I should never forgive a
man who didn’t tell me everything! Billy, come here and confess.
Have you ever done anything wicked?”
“We are all miserable sinners,” John Paul murmured. “I say so
publicly every Sunday”--
“But you don’t specify!” the minister reminded him, with a laugh.
“Yes; but, Billy,” Amy Townsend insisted, “doesn’t it say somewhere
that ‘confession is good for the soul’?”
“Perhaps it is,” he said dryly, “but, generally speaking, it’s
mighty bad for the mind.”
There was an outcry at this from the two women.
“Of course,” Mrs. Paul said, “simply gossiping about one’s self
isn’t confession; but don’t you think, Mr. West, in the really deep
relations of life, between friend and friend, or husband and wife,
there should be no reserves?”
“My dear Mrs. Paul,” he answered, with quick gravity, “there must
be reserves--except with God. The human soul is solitary. But for
confession, that is different; justice and reparation sometimes
demand it; but, again, justice and courage sometimes forbid it.
Unless it is necessary, it is flabby vanity. That’s why I said it
was bad for the mind.”
“Well,” said Amy, with some spirit, “I don’t believe in taking
respect, or--or love, on false pretenses. If I had ever done any
dreadful thing, I should want to confess; good gracious, for the
mere comfort of it I should have to! It would be like walking on a
volcano to keep a secret.”
William West went over to the table where she was writing, and,
finding a place among the clutter of presents to lean his elbow,
sat down and looked at her with good-humored amusement.
“Where are you going to draw the line? How far back are you going
in confessing your sins? Please don’t tell me that you slapped your
nurse when you were three. It would be a horrible shock, and make
me very unhappy to discover such a crime.”
“I shall go all the way back,” said Amy, with decision; “if I had
done anything wrong, I mean very wrong, I should tell you,--if I
had only been a year old!”
The minister laughed. “A desperate villain of one year!” he said;
but as he spoke a puzzled look came into his eyes.
“I think,” Amy Townsend proceeded, “that honor and fairness demand
speaking out. And as for making some one else unhappy,” her voice
dropped a little, and the color came up into her face, “where
people love each other, they have a right to unhappiness.”
“Listen to Amy clamoring for unhappiness!” John Paul commented.
“Don’t worry, my child; you’ll get your share. There’s enough to go
round, I’ve noticed.”
Mrs. Paul laughed, but a note of reality had come into the careless
talk that gave her a sense of being a third party.
“John, you are flippant,” she said; “come, let’s leave these two
poor things alone; they’re dying to get rid of us. And besides, if
Amy is going to confess her sins since she was one year old, it
will take time.”
“That I consider a most uncalled for reference to my twenty-seven
years,” Amy retorted; “and besides, I’ve two more notes to write.”
“And I must go home,” William West said, rising in a preoccupied
manner.
“Why--but I thought you were going to stay to dinner!” Mrs. Paul
protested, with dismay.
“Oh, you must stay to dinner,” Amy urged.
But her lover was resolute. Nor did he, as usual, try to lure
her out into the hall that he might make his adieus. He said
good-night, stopped a moment to discuss with his senior warden
something about the appropriation for repairs at St. James, and
then, with a sober abstraction deepening in his face, went home
through the delicate June dusk, which was full of the scent of the
roses that grow behind the garden walls of the old-fashioned part
of Mercer.