“MY sister has begged you to keep secret what you have seen
to-night—has she not?” was Hetty’s first inquiry, spoken without haste
and without excitement.
A mute bow replied.
“And you have promised to do it?”
“I told Mrs. Wayt that she might depend upon my discretion.”
“Which she construes into a pledge to connive at a wrong done to a
church and a community,” in precisely the same tone and manner as
before.
March stared at her perplexedly. What did the girl mean? And was this
resolute, impassive woman of business the blushing trembler who, a
month ago, could not deny her love for him? She was very serious now,
but apparently very tranquil.
“You would say, if you were not too kind-hearted, that this is what I
am doing—what I have been doing for nearly ten years—and you would be
right. It would not exculpate me in your opinion if I were to represent
that Mr. Wayt’s profession is all that stands between his family and
the poorhouse; that I do not habitually attend the church in which he
officiates, and that my name has never appeared upon the record of any
one of the parishes of which he has had charge since I became a member
of his family. Mr. Wayt and I have not exchanged a syllable directly
for over five years. I neither respect nor like him. He can never
forgive my knowledge of his character, and my interference with his
habits. These were confirmed before I came to my sister.”
“Let me beg,” interposed March, “that you will not go on with what
cannot but be distressing to you. You need no justification in my
sight. If you will permit me to call to-morrow morning we can talk
matters over calmly and at leisure. It is late, and you have had a
severe nervous strain.”
“Unless you insist upon the postponement I would rather speak now,
while my mind is steady in the purpose to make an end of subterfuge and
concealment. I _am_ weary, but it is of falsehoods, acted and spoken.
Hester has told me of your generous pretense of misunderstanding the
nature of Mr. Wayt’s attack. There it is again!”—relapsing into her
usual tone, and with whimsical vexation that made March smile. “I
am afraid I have forgotten how to be frank! My poor sister’s eager
talk of ‘attacks’ and ‘seizures’ and ‘turns’ and ‘sunstroke’ and
‘constitutional headaches’ has unbalanced my perceptions of right and
wrong.”
“You cannot expect me to agree with you there?” the suppressed smile
becoming visible.
She was not to be turned aside from the straight track.
“Nothing so perverts conscience as a systematic course of concealment,
even when it is practiced for what seem to be noble ends. I have felt
this for a long time. Lately the sense of guilt has been insupportable.
It may be relief—if not expiation—to tell the truth in the plainest
terms I can use. It may leave me more wretched than I am now. But right
is right.”
Her chin trembled and she raised her hand to cover it. Her admirable
composure was smoldering excitement, kept under by will and the
conscience whose rectitude she undervalued. With a sub-pang, March
perceived that this disclosure was not a confidence, but a duty.
“Mr. Wayt was a confirmed opium eater and drinker, twelve years ago,”
she resumed in a cold monotone. “He would drink intoxicating liquors,
too, when narcotics were not to be had. I believe the appetite for the
two is a common symptom of the habit. His wife shielded him, then, as
she does now, and so successfully that he kept a church in Cincinnati
for four years. Hester was a beautiful, active child, eight years old,
and a great pet with her father. He does not care for children, as a
rule, but she was pretty and clever and amused him. One day she begged
her mother to let her take ‘dear papa’s’ lunch up to him. It was
always ‘dear papa’ with her. He had a way of locking himself in his
study from morning until night Saturday. Even his wife did not suspect
that he wrote his Sunday sermon with a glass of laudanum and brandy at
his side. He was busy upon a set of popular discourses on ‘Crying Sins
of the Day.’ They drew immense crowds.”
A sarcastic gleam passed over her face, and for the first time the
listener saw a likeness to the witty and wise cripple.
“Hester knocked again and again without getting answered. Then her
father called out that he was busy and did not want any lunch. She was
always willful, and he had indulged her unreasonably. So she declared
that she would not go away until he opened the door and took the
tray—not if she had to stand there and knock all day. He tore open the
door in a fury, threw the tray and the lunch downstairs, and flung the
child after it. The drugged drink had made him crazy.”
March shuddered.
“And that was the cause——”
“It left her what you see, now. The effect upon her character and
feelings was, if possible, more deplorable. From that hour she has
never spoken to her father at all, or of him as ‘papa.’ It is always
‘he’ and ‘him’ to the family, ‘Mr. Wayt’ to strangers. It seems
horribly unnatural, but she loathes and despises him. While she lay
crushed and suffering for the months that passed before she left her
bed, she would go into convulsions at sight of him. Her mother begged
her, on her knees, to ‘forgive poor papa, who had a delirious headache
when he pushed her away from the door.’ Hester refused passionately.
She is no more forgiving now. Yet she was so proud and shrewd, even
then, that she never betrayed to the doctors how she was hurt. She let
everybody believe that it was an accident. I had been her nurse for six
months before she told me the fearful story.
“The truth never got abroad in Cincinnati, but flying rumors of Mr.
Wayt’s growing eccentricities and the possible cause gathered an
opposition party in the church. It was headed by a prominent druggist,
who had talked with others in the trade from whom Mr. Wayt had bought
opium, laudanum, and brandy. He has been more cunning in his purchases
since then. He was obliged to resign his charge, and became what poor
Hester calls ‘an ecclesiastical tramp.’ He controls his appetite within
tolerably safe bounds for a while, sometimes for months, then gives
way, and we live on the verge of discovery and disgrace until the
crisis comes. The end is always the same. We break camp and ‘move on.’”
“Yet he brought clean papers to the Fairhill church.”
A dreary smile went with the answer.
“Clerical charity suffereth long and is kind! Out of curiosity I
attended once a meeting of a presbytery that dismissed him from his
church and commended him to another presbytery. We had narrowly
escaped public exposure at that time. The sexton found Mr. Wayt in the
condition you have seen this evening upon the floor of the lecture room
and called in a physician, who boldly proclaimed that the man was ‘dead
drunk.’ The accused put in a plea of indisposition and an overdose of
brandy, inadvertently swallowed. His brethren, assembled in solemn
session, spoke of his faithful work in the vineyard and the leadings of
Divine Providence, and said that their prayers went with him to his new
field of labor.
“I don’t want to be unjust or cynical, Mr. Gilchrist, and I can see
that there is a pleasanter side to the case. There _is_ such a thing
as Christian charity, and more of it in the world than we are willing
to admit. However church people may gossip about an unpopular pastor,
and maneuver to get rid of him, when the parting comes they will not
brand him in the eyes of others. And clergymen are very faithful to
one another. It is really beautiful to see how they try to hide faults
and foibles. It is a literal fulfillment of the command, ‘Bear ye one
another’s burdens.’ In some—in most of Mr. Wayt’s charges—the secret of
his frequent change of pastorate was not told. He was ‘odd,’ and ‘had
nomadic tastes.’ Sometimes the climate did not agree with his health.
The air was too strong or too weak. Twice poor Hester’s condition
demanded an immediate change. We went to Chicago to be near an eminent
surgeon, who, after all, never saw her.
“I will not weary you with the details of a life such as I pray God
few families know. After a few years Hester and I became hopeless of
anything better. Wherever we might go, change, and the probability of
disgrace, were a mere question of time. My sister never loses faith
in her husband and in an overruling Power that will not forsake the
righteous. For, strange as it may seem, she believes in the piety of a
man whose sacred profession is a continual lie.
“Oh, Mr. Gilchrist!” the enforced monotony of her tone wavering into
a cry of pain—“I think _that_ is the worst of all! When I recollect
my mother’s pure religion—when I see your mother’s beneficent life
and firm faith in goodness and in God—when I know that, in spite of
the seeming untruthfulness which is, she thinks, necessary to protect
her husband—my sister holds fast to her love and trust in an Almighty
Friend, and walks humbly with her God, I feel such indignation against
a man who is the slave of passion, selfish, vain, and conscienceless,
and yet assumes to show such souls the way to heaven, that I dare not
enter the church where he is allowed to preach, lest I should cry out
in the face of his hearers against the monstrous cheat!”
Her eyes flamed clear; the torrent of feeling swept away reserve and
coldness.
“I understand!” March said, with sympathetic warmth. “You never
disappoint me. Tell me what I can do to help you. I cannot let you
endure all this alone any longer.”
“Nobody can take my share of the burden. I would hardly know myself
without it. It will be the heavier for my sister’s distress and
Hester’s anger when they hear what I have decided to do. Hester was on
her way over to your house when you met her, full of news she could not
wait until to-morrow to tell. My mother’s only brother went to Japan
thirty years ago and became rich. He died last March, leaving most of
his fortune to benevolent institutions in America. To each of us, his
sister’s children, he bequeathed ten thousand dollars. It is not a
fortune, but with our modest tastes, and when joined to the little I
already have, it will support us decently. My first thought, when the
news reached us, a week ago, was ‘Now, Mr. Wayt need never take another
charge! We need not live upon tainted food!’”
“You are a noble woman, Hetty——”
She interrupted him.
“I am not! This is not self-sacrifice, but self-preservation. If the
money had not been given to us, I must have found some way out of a
false position. I want you to tell your father all you know. Keep back
nothing I have told you. He is a good and a merciful man. Let him
speak openly to Mr. Wayt and forbid him ever to enter the pulpit again
upon penalty of public exposure and suspension from the ministry. What
Judge Gilchrist says will have weight. With all his high looks and
sounding talk, Mr. Wayt is a coward. He would not venture to resist
the decision. Then we will go away quietly. I have thought of the
little town in which my sister and I were born. Living is cheap there
and there are excellent schools for the children. Twenty-five thousand
dollars will go very far in that region, and we can be honest people
once more.”
“You have arranged it all, have you?” said March, not at all in the
tone she had expected to hear. “Give them the cheap town, and the good
schools, and the twenty-five thousand dollars by all means. They can
have everything but _you_!”