That John Fenton was in a peculiar frame of mind was sufficiently
proved by the fact that Sunday morning had arrived, and he had arisen
early,--very early, three hours before noon,--and was pleased at
this innovation in his habits. It was a clear, bracing day, with a
promise of spring in the air, and a saline odor in the breeze, a
public confession that it had kissed the sea when the sun came up.
How much he owes to the salt air for the sprightliness that is in him
the average New Yorker seldom realizes. Manhattan Island is a natural
health-resort. That many of its inhabitants languish and die before
their time is the fault not of nature but of man.
John Fenton strode down the avenue after breakfast, one of the
best-dressed men abroad at that early hour. The last few months
had made a great change in his outward appearance. Somewhat to
his surprise, he had found that by refraining from alcoholic
self-indulgence he had not only gained in nervous energy, but had
reaped a fat financial harvest. Renewing his youth in more ways than
one, he had expended at his tailor’s money that, under his former
habits of life, would have gone to swell a saloon’s growing surplus.
He had been noted in the old days for his good taste in dress, and his
years of carelessness had not destroyed his natural ability to select
attire that was at once fashionable and becoming.
With a clean-shaven face, a glow on his cheeks, and the light of
physical contentment in his eyes, John Fenton looked positively
handsome as he entered Richard Stoughton’s rooms, and found his young
friend, _en négligé_, smoking a pipe, and perusing, with a sense of
self-satisfaction that age cannot wither nor custom stale, his work of
the previous day as it appeared in print in that morning’s edition of
the _Trumpet_.
“What is it I see before me?” cried Richard, springing up, and holding
out his hand to his guest. “Upon what meat doth this, our Cæsar, feed,
that he gets up and out before noon?”
Fenton seated himself, and lighted a cigar.
“Do you know, my boy,” he remarked quietly, “I have spent the night
in a sleepless vigil, pondering the error of your ways. I have become
convinced that it is absolutely imperative that you should be given an
antidote for last night’s poison.”
“I did smoke too much, I acknowledge,” returned Richard densely; “but I
have drunk several cups of coffee this morning, and feel much better.”
“Flippant youngster! have you no reverence in your make-up? I referred
not to the cigars, but to the _tout ensemble_.”
“Is that her name, John? It’s a queer one, you must admit. But,
seriously, what are you driving at? Here you are at ten o’clock on
Sunday morning--an hour that has for years, as you have told me, found
you sound asleep--abroad in the land, dressed with the most extreme
care, and delivering sermons gratis to your friends. I acknowledge that
there is a mystery here that I cannot solve.”
“It is simple enough, Richard. I have come to an important decision,
and I am about to take a step in which I want your companionship and
sympathy.”
There was a solemnity in Fenton’s manner that caused Richard to look at
him with mingled curiosity and surprise.
“Of course, John, I’ll give you all the help I can. But frankly, now,
what are you going to do?”
Fenton puffed in silence for a moment, gazing earnestly at his
companion.
“What am I going to do, Richard? I’m going to church.”
Richard laughed merrily.
“And you want my support and countenance in this heroic purpose? Well,
John, I see no reason why I should discourage your eccentric but
praiseworthy design. If you’ll amuse yourself with the papers for a few
moments, I will get into a garb of a more devotional character than
this old smoking-jacket. To go to church with John Fenton! That is a
privilege that I had never hoped to win. But I’ve given up all hope of
understanding you, John. You’re a puzzle I can’t solve.”
With these words Richard entered an inner room, and left John Fenton
to puff his cigar, and glance indifferently over the newspapers. It is
seldom that a true journalist cannot find occupation, even excitement,
in the latest edition of the newspaper with which he is connected;
but, for some reason or other, Fenton was in no mood to take his usual
professional interest in the Sunday make-up of the _Trumpet_, and
when Richard returned to the room he found his friend standing at the
window, and gazing dreamily into the street.
A quarter of an hour later the two friends were seated in one of the
rear pews of a church that had kept pace with the demands that the
modern love of luxury makes on the outward and visible signs of an
inward and spiritual cult. An agnostic, even an atheist, would have
felt a reverential awe in such surroundings, an inclination to worship
something, if it was nothing but the beauty of interior decoration, as
an abstract influence, or the concrete glory of well-dressed women.
There is something for all men in a church that frowns not on the
æsthetic pleasures that the eye and ear can taste.
As they rose at the opening words of the service, “The Lord is in his
holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him,” Richard’s eye
followed Fenton’s, and a new light broke upon his mind. His friend was
not as inexplicably eccentric as he had considered him. About half-way
between them and the altar, and at an angle that placed her in full
view from where they stood, Richard saw Gertrude Van Vleck, a striking
figure even in that gathering of women of fashion. He turned on the
instant, and his eyes looked into Fenton’s. He could not repress a
smile that impressed its meaning upon the latter, whose face bore an
expression of mingled satisfaction and annoyance as he knelt to join in
the general confession. His satisfaction was caused by the fact that
he could watch Gertrude Van Vleck, unobserved by her, for an entire
morning. His annoyance was due to the mocking light in Richard’s glance.
As the service progressed, with its stately and impressive words and
forms, Richard felt keenly the influence of his surroundings. He had
been brought up in the atmosphere of the church, and under its caress
the highest dreams and aspirations of his early youth were revivified.
Before long he had forgotten John Fenton and Gertrude Van Vleck; and
as the soft strains of Lenten music stole through the perfumed air,
the face of a brown-eyed woman whose gaze was sad and tearful filled
his soul with remorse. He felt like one who had committed sacrilege.
The garish glitter, the tawdry brilliancy, of the night he had spent
in Bohemia seemed to him at that moment pitifully repulsive. The dark
face of the girl who had fascinated him for the moment told its true
story as he recalled it in the calm and holy precincts of the temple
where he sat. That he had yielded to the debasing influence that she
had exerted at the time was a fact that filled him with amazement and
discontent.
“What strange coincidence is this?” he exclaimed to himself, as the
words of the Epistle for the Third Sunday in Lent seemed to voice
the thoughts that were surging through his brain: “Be ye therefore
followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ
also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a
sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. But all uncleanness, let
it not be once named amongst you, as becometh saints; neither foolish
talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of
thanks. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things
which are done of them in secret.”
Richard Stoughton was of an extremely impressionable temperament, and
time had not yet hardened the shell that surrounds the soul. It seemed
to him at that moment as though the inspired word of God had spoken to
him alone in that consecrated temple, and had warned him to seek higher
things; to avoid, for the sake of a great reward, the mud-holes and
pitfalls in the path before him. He knelt in prayer with a reverential
fervor that was new to him.
From the Gospel for the day, St. Luke xi. 14, the rector had taken his
text: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not
with me scattereth.” Richard listened to the sermon with an interest
that was almost painful. The preacher was a man not yet in middle life,
who had already won a high position for his eloquence and fearlessness.
There was no prosy reiteration of self-evident truths that have lost
their influence through long service in the pulpit in the words that
he poured forth. He was a man of the times; and he applied the faith
that was in him to the topics of the hour, and drove his lesson home
with a skill and courage that were intensely effective. He seemed
to recognize that he was a warrior in the front ranks of the church
militant, and there was no half-heartedness in the blows that he
struck. The prosperity of a sermon, like that of a jest, lies in the
ear of him that hears it. Richard Stoughton was in a receptive mood,
and the ringing words of the preacher touched chords in his nature
that had long ceased to vibrate. He bent his head at the benediction
with a sense of renewed reverence and faith that was both welcome and
inspiring.
When or how he lost track of John Fenton he never knew. He remembered,
later on, that as he had left the church he had caught a glimpse of his
friend walking down the avenue by the side of Gertrude Van Vleck, but
at the moment the sight had made no impression on him. The dominant
thought in his mind found expression in the words that seemed to rise
uncontrollably to his lips:--
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against
us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For
thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen.”