The winter had come on, introduced by a long and brilliant autumn, and
Joyce was so engrossed in her work that she scarcely realized how long
it was since she had left Meadow Brook.
In addition to her work she had become deeply engrossed in Bible study.
In one of her trips to the city she had discovered a Bible School of
national renown, and found that she could so arrange her schedule as
to make one or two evening classes a week possible. Thereafter when
she was not actually busy with her school work, or doing some little
helpful thing for somebody else, she could be found studying her Bible.
It had become a fascination, this searching for new riches in the Book.
She had always enjoyed studying it, but never before with such a hunger
for it as came now. Day by day gave her new wonders, a new opening up
of the revelation of God to His children.
When Professor Harrington asked her to go somewhere with him he
frequently found that she had another engagement in the city. Becoming
curious, she finally took him to one of her classes, with the result
that he entered into a lengthy argument with her all the way home,
trying to persuade her to give it up. He informed her that it was
ridiculous for her to waste her fine mind being led by men who ignored
the simplest principles of science, and pinned their faith to a book
that was so old that no one could be sure who wrote it, or where it
came from. He told her that a person was a fool to swallow whole the
teachings of men who denied geology, zoölogy, science in every branch;
who taught that the legends of Scripture were actual truths; and who
dared to enter into the occult and profess to have spiritual relations
with the Maker of the Universe; who even descended to the ridiculous
and marked out the future from the mystical writings of the men they
chose to call prophets.
When he reached this point Joyce sat up straight in the train, her
cheeks glowing, her eyes bright, so that those sitting near must have
noticed her, and said:
“Stop! I cannot listen to any more of your talk. You and I simply have
nothing in common----!”
He saw that he had offended her, and sought to make his peace. He
apologized and said they would speak of something else, and for the
remainder of the half-hour that the late train took in dragging from
station to station till it reached Silverton, he made himself most
fascinating, telling in his best style of a trip he took to Switzerland
the summer before.
Ordinarily Joyce would have enjoyed this with all her eager young mind,
visualizing the beautiful descriptions and putting herself there almost
as if she had experienced it herself. But now she only sat quietly,
looking straight ahead, a withdrawal in her manner, a look in her eyes
as if she saw something that others could not see; an air that showed
she was thinking deeply about something, and her thoughts were not
following his words.
He was piqued and mortified. He could not believe that she would
not yield to the things that she had often enjoyed before in his
conversation. In fact, it had been a source of much pleasure to him
to tell her of rare experiences he had had in travel and watch the
flush of her cheek and the glow in her eye as she enjoyed it with him.
It cut him that he could not reach her, that she had withdrawn her
friendliness. It mortified his pride and his sense of superiority. And
most of all it hurt him in his self-love. Perhaps he would have named
it love for her, for he had come during the winter to recognize that
that was what he felt for this girl; and seeing that was the case, he
was the more determined to mold and make her as she should be to fit
his walk and station in life. Albeit, his love for any one was merely
another name for self-love. He wanted her and her love merely to make
himself more complete for himself, and so he was really in love with
himself all the time.
For the rest of the ride Joyce was absolutely silent, and when they
alighted at the station and started toward her home she said nothing,
and she walked a trifle apart from him and ignored the arm he offered.
In a sudden yearning for his heart’s desire, he took her hand and drew
it within his arm, holding her hand in a firm warm grasp and speaking
with a new tenderness.
“Joyce, don’t you know why I have spoken to you as I have? Don’t you
know that it is because I love you, because I cannot bear to see your
brilliant mind filled with such twaddle, such nonsense, such rot----!”
“Stop!” she cried, wrenching her hand away from his clasp. “Don’t you
ever dare to speak such words to me again! Don’t dare to talk about the
wonderful words of inspiration in that way. It is blasphemy!”
“Now, my dear child----” he began, trying to get possession of her
hand once more, “you have wholly misunderstood me. The words of
Scripture are just as beautiful to me, and just as sacred in their way
as they are to you. It is a mere difference of the way of looking at
them. Now I----”
“Mr. Harrington, I am not interested in how you look at the Bible.
I would rather not hear you tell about it. You have filled me with
horror.”
“Are you not interested that I am telling you that I love you?” he
asked in deep impassioned tones. “I am asking you now to be my wife?
Cannot we put these trivial things away and be one in spirit now?” He
leaned toward her gently and tried to capture the little gloved hand
once more.
But Joyce quickly put her Bible in it and drew away from him.
“No!” she said. “No. We could never be one in spirit or in anything
else while you deny the inspiration of the Scriptures and call those
wonderful expositions that we heard tonight rot and twaddle and
nonsense. You are one of those people that it warns against in the
Bible: ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy, and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world,
and not after Christ.’ It also says: ‘Avoiding profane and vain
babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called.’”
“Now Joyce, please don’t quote Scripture at me. Let us drop that. If we
love each other those things will settle themselves by and by. Let us
talk a little while about ourselves. Tell me, you love me, Joyce, don’t
you? I’m sure I’ve seen it in your eyes.”
“No,” said Joyce frankly, “I don’t think I do. I don’t think it would
be possible for me to love any one who thought of the things that are
the most precious to me in the way you do.”
“But, those things aside, you really in your heart love me? Tell me you
do, Joyce. I long to hear you say the words. Just speak out your own
true heart. Once that question is settled, the other things will all
fall in line.”
“I can’t put those things aside, Professor Harrington. They are a part
of my soul. Nothing counts without them.”
There was a long silence. They had almost reached Joyce’s little home.
He suddenly turned her about.
“Let us walk back down this next street. It is not late, and if you
will not let me come into your house, at least we can walk a little
longer. I must have this question settled tonight. I cannot let this
separation go on between us any longer.”
“The question so far as I am concerned is settled now,” she said firmly.
“But Joyce, if it were not for this difference? Suppose I thought as
you do, would you say yes?”
Joyce hesitated. Theirs had been a pleasant companionship in a way.
“I cannot tell,” she said thoughtfully. “It would have made so much
difference, I cannot tell how I would have felt.”
“There!” he said triumphantly. “You see, I was right. You do love me,
only you are so filled with this fanaticism that you won’t let yourself
see it.”
“You are mistaken,” said Joyce gravely. “I have never even considered
it, because from the first of my acquaintance I have known that you
were this way.”
“This way? _What way?_” he asked sharply. It hurt him to have her
criticise him now, when he had declared his love for her. Joyce thought
a moment.
“You do not believe. You do not understand the things of the Spirit.
You base whatever faith you have on the wisdom of men, not in the
power of God. Haven’t you ever heard that the wisdom of this world is
foolishness with God?”
“We are talking around in a circle,” said Harrington crossly. “I was
speaking of loving one another. From the moment I laid eyes upon you I
knew that you were mine. Does it mean nothing to you that I came after
you when I did not even know who you were? Does it mean nothing that
the vision of your face stayed in my heart----”
“From the moment I laid eyes on you I knew that you were not mine,”
said Joyce suddenly. “It is getting very late. Hear! The clocks are
striking twelve. I must go home this minute!” Her heart had suddenly
gone into a panic. She wanted to get away by herself and think. Life
was a strange thing. Was this man going to insist on being in her life?
Harrington, deeply offended, led her to her home in silence. She bade
him good night and received a stiff good night in answer. He stalked
away in the moonlight, a handsome picture of a man with a rising
future, and much that was good and beautiful for a maiden to think
upon. Yet she turned into her little warm room as to a haven, and
knelt down by her couch.
“Oh, my dear heavenly Father! Keep me. Don’t let me get bewildered by
things. I don’t want to love any one now, please. And I know he isn’t a
right one to love.”
From that night forth she unconsciously ceased to pray for him. It
seemed somehow as if her duty were done there, and it was not for her
to further seek his salvation. It seemed almost to her as if he desired
her soul’s destruction, so determined had he been to drag her away into
his world. It almost frightened her when she thought about it. For
several days thereafter she kept to herself as much as possible when at
school.
For several days Harrington maintained a grave aloofness toward her,
did not come to her room, nor appear in the hall when she would be
likely to be about. When he needed to give a message to her he sent it
through one of the seniors, or wrote a stiff note signing himself J. S.
Harrington.
Joyce felt that she was being punished, and managed not to have to go
to the office at all that week. She never had been a frequenter of his
office at any time, however, so that was scarcely noticeable.
But one morning he happened to pass her room quite early, before
scarcely anybody had entered the building, and he heard her singing
softly to herself as she put the arithmetic problems on the blackboard
for the day.
“And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
Oh the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known--”
The words were the words of a hymn, he knew, one of those he had once
criticised as being “emotional twaddle,” yet there was something
exquisitely lovely and dear in the way she sang it, the perfect
confidence of her soul in that One in whom she trusted expressed in
those simple words. He glanced at her wistfully as he passed the door
and took in all the slender grace of her pose, as the white fingers,
holding the chalk, made rapid lines of figures on the board. The sun
made a bright background of beaten gold, outlining the lovely head, and
he glanced back wistfully. Here was a rare girl indeed. Why, in this
age of progress, should it be that such a choice flower of womanhood
should be tainted with a primitive fanaticism? It was as if she were
a flower left over from the Victorian age, out of place in a world
that had grown beyond her--exquisite, yet impractical. How could she
possibly hope to get on in the world with such notions?
In the calm reflections of the night--of several nights--in which he
had lain awake and gone over their last conversation, he had chided
himself severely for going so far. He simply must not let himself
go again, not until he was sure that he could make her over. Never
would it do for him to hamper his future with one who was so utterly
unadaptable to life as he found her up to date. It simply would ruin
his career.
Yet that afternoon he made a special trip to town to find a certain
book, one written in the vague modern shibboleth, sweet and mystical,
with the emphasis on loving one another, and being able to see the good
in everybody, and the next morning, with a perfect rose just coming out
of bud, she found it lying on her desk. No name, just the rose and the
book. Of course she knew who put them there, but if she had not, his
smile and greeting as he passed her in the hall would have told her.
And that day she prayed:
“Now, Father, help me. Keep me.”
* * * * *
When Tyke came back from Canada there was vengeance in his eye. It
had not taken him long to find out that there was no such street and
number as Lib had given him, but he did not turn about and flee home
without first examining every inch of the city where there might be a
possible clue to Darcy. He went to the General Delivery and asked for
letters for Darcy Sherwood. He even stood for hours behind a pillar in
the post-office and watched the comers and goers, hoping to find Darcy
among them. He walked over the city in daytime and at night, examined
its haunts and amusements, looked over the hotel registries, and
searched in a number of places where it seemed likely to him he might
find his former partner, but no trace did he find of Darcy.
The first meeting with his three friends after his return was not very
satisfactory. They chided him for his absence, derided him for going to
Canada at all at the instigation of a sharp child, and charged him with
trying to serve his own ends by the delay. They even went so far as
to suggest that perhaps he was in with Darcy himself and this was all
a big bluff. Tyke drew off and fairly bellowed at them in his wrath,
and finally settled down to a plan which he said would bring things to
a climax within a week. The four heads were bent together long over a
paper on which Cottar was jotting down suggestions for Tyke to act
upon. It was Tyke, after all, who was made to play the part out in the
open. And once, while they were talking in a little shanty far away
from the town, with a bit of a candle in an old lantern for light, and
their paper spread out on a rough box, there came a face at the window,
a long, white, thin old face with only two teeth, one above and one
below; a long heavy wisp of snow-white hair straggling over a high
yellow forehead, and watery, faded eyes, yet keen, watching them. It
ducked down when Tyke lifted his head once and looked nervously that
way as a twig rubbed up and down on the roof in the wind from the old
apple-tree outside, but the eyes peered up again and watched long and
silently, listening; and crouched when the men put out the lantern and
stole away into the night. It was only old Noah Casey, harmless and
wandering about again, escaped from the poor farm, and travelling some
of the old roads of his youth. Nobody minded old Noah, though he gave
them a start now and then.
He was following a voice now, the voice he had heard loudest inside
the shanty, the voice of the one with the red hair. Crouching low, he
stole from tuft to tuft of the marshy grass, a thing of the night, old,
flighty, his worn garment colorless like weathered wood, his wisps of
hair blowing like gray clouds about his mild, anxious face from under
the tattered felt hat. A bent old gnome in the dark, with something on
his mind.