The senior warden of St. James was wrong when he said that his
minister lost his moral grip. There was, no doubt, a time of
upheaval and shock, a staggering under a calamity which seemed to
have no moral excuse, to be only a senseless shattering of a human
life.
But he got his balance again. He made no effort to see Amy. This
was partly to spare her, and partly from a sense of the futility
of argument; the thing was done; if she married him ten times
over, it would not be the same. As she said, she had never known
him; and perhaps he had never known her. But, for that matter, who
of us knows the other? The question is, is it worth while to try
to attain, or to bestow, such knowledge? Gossip, of course, had
run riot when it was known that he had been jilted; but gossip,
after it reaches a certain point of insult and falsehood, becomes
a source of amusement to its victims. West, with his delicate
sense of humor, found other people’s opinions of his sufferings
not without interest. It being nobody’s business but his own,
only three people besides Miss Townsend and himself knew the
facts--the Pauls and his own lawyer; so no light was thrown upon
the subject to Mercer, which seethed and bubbled, and made itself
wildly ludicrous. The minister went away after that first fury of
parish excitement was over, and came back in four months, quite
brown, with a good appetite, and several very interesting pieces
of tapestry which he had picked up on the other side. He dined a
little less frequently at the Pauls’, and was never once reminded
that Mrs. Paul had been instrumental in bringing him to Mercer.
He became, perhaps, a little more of a man’s man; a little more
impatient with his feminine correspondents; a little less polite
to the old ladies, who thought him less good-looking “since his
disappointment.” But he took a deep and passionate hold upon
affairs; the conditions of labor, the hideous problems of vice; the
reformation of the sordid politics of the small city in which he
lived,--these things filled his life. Were they enough? Who knows!
We make husks into bread when the soul starves.
As for Amy, that is another story.
* * * * *
It was nearly two years after this that John Paul walked home one
night with Mr. Woodhouse, who was a fellow vestryman of St. James.
They had been sitting smoking by William West’s fireside, talking
over a strike which was on in one of the mills, where it seemed
as though the rights lay with the strikers; a fact which these
gentlemen believed to be unusual. It was nearly midnight when they
left the rectory and went along the empty, echoing street together.
“It strikes me,” said Mr. Paul, “that you hadn’t much to say for
yourself to-night, Woodhouse. You’re the canniest fellow about
giving an opinion! Didn’t you want to commit yourself?”
“I haven’t any opinion yet,” said the other man slowly; “and,
somehow, I got to thinking--I say, John, after all, what do you
make of West’s telling Miss Townsend that matter?”
“I think she didn’t know which side her bread was buttered,” John
Paul said gruffly.
“Oh, that’s another question,” the lawyer said. “I think almost any
woman is too good for almost any man. I wonder they don’t all think
better of it at the last moment, and throw us over!”
“How long have you been married, Gifford?” the older man inquired
cynically. “I’ll tell you what Kate says: Kate says if Amy could
throw him over, she ought to have had the chance to. So she thinks
West ought to have told her.”
“That’s like saying, if there is a chance of breaking your neck by
taking some preposterous leap, take it,” the lawyer commented. “But
as I look back at it now, and see how it has aged Billy, and--well,
hardened him a little, I think--it seems such an unnecessary
calamity; such a blunder! And yet”--
“Kate has views about heredity, and all that sort of thing,” Mr.
Paul explained. “She says a woman has a right to say her children
shan’t have a--shady character for a father. That was too much for
me; I don’t generally contradict my Boss; it isn’t peaceful. But
that was too much for me! Billy West shady! I gave my wife a piece
of my mind. I tell you, Woodhouse, women are hard.”
“Well, but there’s something in that,” the lawyer protested. “A
woman has not only a right, but a duty, to think of her children,
and a possible moral taint”--
“Moral grandmother!” John Paul broke in; “West is one man in
a hundred. I think he’s well rid of Amy: I told him so at the
time. Why, look here; a man who has not repented of his sin has
no inclination to confess it. And, having repented and made
reparation, confession becomes a mere matter of expediency. Why,
good heavens, Gifford! is there to be no escape from sin? What’s
all this talk about forgiveness mean, if we’ve got to rake up
the past and agonize over it as long as we live? Isn’t there any
statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don’t believe any
large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues! And
yet,” he ended, suddenly cooling, “I swear it is a difficult
question, the telling or not telling the girl you are going to
marry.”
“If you bring it down to expediency, it’s simple enough,” Gifford
Woodhouse said; “it was obviously inexpedient. Even if she had
married him, and simply remembered, would either of them have been
any better off? Would any end have been subserved by putting such
painful knowledge on her conscience as well as his own? It was
not as though there was a lady ‘with nine small children and one
at the breast’ somewhere round the corner in the Past, who might
turn up some day. That sort of sin affects the relation of the
man and woman, and it may be simple prudence to confess. Though I
think there is a question, even there. But in this case expediency,
you might even call it unselfishness, would make him hold his
tongue. The only thing is, perhaps there is something higher than
expediency?”
They had reached Mr. Paul’s door; he pitched his cigar into the
street and pulled out his keys, shaking them on the end of their
chain.
“You mean, abstractly, is it right or wrong, under circumstances
like these, where no third person is to be cleared or benefited, to
tell? Does honor demand confession?”
“Yes,” said the vestryman; “was it a duty to speak, or a duty to be
silent?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Was West a fool or a saint?” insisted the younger man.
“I’ll be hanged if I know,” said the senior warden.