Part 13

“It is plain,” replied Bayard, flushing, “that I no longer move in good society. It did not even occur to me to ask you. I should enjoy it--it would rest me more than anything I can think of. Not that that matters, of course--but I should be more grateful than it is possible for you to understand.”

Helen went to the piano without ado, and began to sing the great serenade. She played with feeling, and had a sweet, not a strong voice; it had the usual amateur culture, no more, but it had a quality not so usual. She sang with a certain sumptuous delicacy (if the words may be conjoined) by which Bayard found himself unexpectedly moved. He sat with his hand over his eyes, and she sang quite through.

“Komm beglücke mich? Komm beglücke mich!”

Her voice sank, and ceased. What tenderness! What strength! What vigor and hope and joy, and--forbid the thought!--what power of loving, the woman had!

“Some lucky fellow will know, some day,” thought the devotee. Aloud, he said nothing at all. Helen’s hands lay on the keys; she, too, sat silent. It was beginning to grow dark in the cottage parlor. The long, lace curtain blew straight in, and towards her; as it dropped, it fell about her head and shoulders, and caught there; it hung like a veil; in the dim light it looked like--

She started to her feet and tossed it away.

“Oh!” he breathed, “why not let it stay? Just for a minute! It did nobody any harm.”

“I am not so sure of that,” thought Helen. But what she said, was,--

“I will light the candles.”

He sprang to help her; the sleeve of her muslin dress fell away from her arm as she lifted the little flicker of the match to the tall brass candlestick on the mantel. He took the match from her, and touched the candle. In the dusk they looked at each other with a kind of fear. Bayard was very pale.

Helen had her rich, warm look. She appeared taller than usual, and seemed to stand more steadily on her feet than other women.

“Do you want me to thank you?” asked Bayard in a low voice.

“No,” said Helen.

“I must go,” he said abruptly.

“Mother will be back,” observed Helen, not at her ease. “And Father will be getting on with the Unforgiven, and come home any minute.”

“Very well,” replied Bayard, seating himself.

“Not that I would keep you!” suggested Helen suddenly.

He smiled a little sadly, and this time unexpectedly rose again.

“I don’t expect you to understand, of course. But I really ought to go. And I am going.”

“Very well,” said Helen stiffly, in her turn.

“I have a--something to write, you see,” explained Bayard.

“You don’t call it a sermon any more, do you? Heresy writes a ‘something.’ How delicious! Do go and write it, by all means. I hope the Unforgiven will appreciate it.”

“You are not a dull woman,” observed Bayard uncomfortably. “You don’t for an instant suppose I _want_ to go?”

Helen raised her thick, white eyelids slowly; a narrow, guarded light shone underneath them. She only answered that she supposed nothing about it.

“If I stay,” suggested Bayard, with a wavering look, “will you sing The Serenade to me--all over again?”

“Not one bar of it!” replied Helen promptly.

“You are the wiser of us two,” said Bayard after a pause.

The tide was coming in, and gained upon the reef just outside the cottage windows, with a soft, inexorable sound.

“I am not a free man,” he added.

“Return to your chains and your cell,” suggested Helen. “It is--as you say--the better way.”

“I said nothing of the kind! Pardon me.”

“Didn’t you? It does not signify. It doesn’t often signify what people _say_--do you think?”

“Are you coming to see my people--the work? You said you would, you know. Shall I call and take you, some day?”

“Do you think it matters--to the drunkards?”

“Oh, well,” said Bayard, looking disappointed, “never mind.”

“But I do mind,” returned Helen, in her full, boylike voice. “I want to come. And I’m coming. I had rather come, though, than be taken. I’ll turn up some day in the anxious seat when you don’t expect me. I’ll wear a veil, and an old poke bonnet--yes, and a blanket shawl--and confess. I defy you to find me out!”

“Miss Carruth,” said the young preacher with imperiousness, “my work is not a parlor charade.”

Helen looked at him. Defiance and deference battled in her brown eyes; for that instant, possibly, she could have hated or loved him with equal ease; she felt his spiritual superiority to herself as something midway between an antagonism and an attraction, but exasperating whichever way she looked at it. She struggled with herself, but made no reply.

“If I am honored with your presence,” continued Bayard, still with some decision of manner, “I shall count upon your sympathy.... God knows I need it!” he added in a different tone.

“And you shall have it,” said Helen softly.

It was too dark to see the melting of her face; but he knew it was there. They stood on the piazza of the cottage in the strong, salt wind. Her muslin dress blew back. The dim light of the candle within scarcely defined her figure. They seemed to stand like creatures of the dusk, uncertain of each other or of themselves. He held out his hand; she placed her own within it cordially. How warm and womanly, how strong and fine a touch she had! He bade her good-night, and hurried away.

That “something” which is to supersede the sermon was not written that night. Bayard found himself unable to work. He sat doggedly at his desk for an hour, then gave it up, put out his light, and seized his hat again. He went down to the beach and skirted the shore, taking the spray in his face. His brain was on fire; not with intellectual labor. His heart throbbed; not with anxiety for the fishing population. He reached a reef whence he could see the Mainsail Hotel, and there sat down to collect himself. The cottage was lighted now; the parlor windows glimmered softly; the long, lace curtains were blowing in and out. Shadows of figures passed and repassed. The Professor had settled the state of the Unforgiven, and had come back from the clam study; he paced to and fro across the parlor of the Flying Jib; a graceful figure clung to his theologic arm, and kept step with him as he strode.

Presently she came to the low window, and pushed back the lace curtain, which had blown in, half across the little parlor. She lifted her arms, and shut the window.

The waves beat the feet of the cliff monotonously; like the bars of a rude, large music which no man had been able to read. Bayard listened to them with his head thrown back on the hard rock, and his hat over his eyes. Even the gaze of the stars seemed intrusive, curious, one might say impertinent, to him. He desired the shell of the mollusk that burrowed in the cleft of the cliff.

The tide was rising steadily. The harbor wore its full look; it seemed about to overflow, like a surcharged heart. The waves rose on; they took definite rhythm. All the oldest, sweetest meanings of music--the maddest and the tenderest cries of human longing--were in the strain:--

“Komm beglücke mich? Beglücke mich!”

Those mighty lovers, the sea and the shore, urged and answered, resisted and yielded, protested and pleaded, retreated and met, loved and clasped, and slept. When the tide came to the full, the wind went down.

XV.

DEAR MR. BAYARD,--I have been thinking since I saw you. I have health, and a summer. What can I do to help your work? I haven’t a particle of experience, and not much enthusiasm. But I am ready to try, if you are willing to try me. I don’t think I’m adapted to drunkards. I don’t know which of us would be more scared. He would probably run for the nearest grogshop to get rid of me. Aren’t there some old ladies who bother you to death, whom you could turn over to me? Yours sincerely, HELEN CARRUTH.

This characteristic note, the first that he had ever received from her, reached Bayard by mail, a few days after his call at the cottage of the Flying Jib.

He sat down and wrote at once:--

MY DEAR MISS CARRUTH,--There is an old lady. She doesn’t bother me at all, but I am at my wits’ end with her. She runs away from the institution where she belongs, and there’s no other place for her. At present she is inflicting herself on Mrs. Job Slip, No. 143 Thoroughfare Street, opposite the head of Angel Alley. Her mind is thought to be slightly disordered by the loss of her son, drowned last winter in the wreck of the Clara Em. Mrs. Slip will explain the circumstances to you more fully. Inquire for Johnny’s mother. If the old woman ever had any other name, people have forgotten it, now. I write in great haste and stress of care. It will not be necessary to traverse Angel Alley to reach this address, which is quite in the heart of the town, and perfectly safe and suitable for you. I thank you very much. Yours sincerely, EMANUEL BAYARD.

Helen frowned a little when she read this. No Bishop of a diocese, dictating the career of a deaconess, no village rector, guiding some anxious and aimless visiting young lady through the mild dissipations of parish benevolence, could have returned a more business-like, calm, even curt, reply.

The position of a man who may not love a woman and must not invite her to marry him--or, to put it a little differently, who must not love and cannot marry--is one which it seems to be asking too much of women to understand. At all events they seldom or never do. The withdrawals, the feints, the veils and chills and silences, by which a woman in a similar position protects herself, may be as transparent as golden mist to him whom she evades; but the sturdy retreat of a masculine conscience from a too tender or too tempting situation is as opaque as a gravestone to the feminine perception.

Accustomed to be eagerly wooed, Helen did not know what to make of this devotee who did not urge himself even upon her friendship. She had never given any man that treasure before. Like all high-minded women who have not spent themselves in experiments of the sensibilities, Helen regarded her own friendship as valuable. She would have preferred him to show, at least, that he appreciated his privilege. She would have liked him to make friendship as devotedly as those other men had made love to her.

His reserve, his distance, his apparent moodiness, and undoubted ability to live without seeing her except when he got ready to do so, gave her a perplexed trouble more important than pique.

Without ado or delay, she took the next electric car for Mrs. Slip’s.

Bayard received that afternoon, by the familiar hand of Joey Slip, this brief rejoinder:--

DEAR MR. BAYARD,--This experienced boy seems to be on intimate terms with you, and offers to take my report, which stands thus: Johnny’s mother is in the Widows’ Home. Shall I write you details? Truly yours, H. C.

“Run on down to the Mainsail Hotel, Joey,” said the minister, writing rapidly. “Find the lady--there will be a good many ladies--and hand her this.”

“Pooh!” retorted this nautical child with a superior air, “Vat ain’t nuffin! She’s good-lookin’ nuff to find off Zheorges in a fog-bank.”

Thus ran the note:--

DEAR MISS CARRUTH,--I will call for the report to-morrow. Thank you. Yours, E. B.

When Bayard reached her mother’s piazza the next evening, Helen was in the middle of the harbor.

“My daughter is considered a good oarswoman, I believe,” said the Professor with a troubled look. “I know nothing about these matters myself. I confess I wish I did. I have not felt easy about her; she has propelled the craft so far into the stream. I am delighted to see you, Mr. Bayard! I will put another boat at your service--that is--I suppose you understand the use of oars?”

“Better than I do Verbal Inspiration, Professor!” replied Bayard, laughing. “She is rather far out, and the tide has turned.”

He ran down the pier, and leaped into the first boat that he could secure. It happened to be a dory.

“Can you overtake her?” asked her father with a keen look.

“I can try,” replied the young man, smiling.

The Professor heaved a sigh, whether of relief or of anxiety it would not be easy to say, and stood upon the pier watching Bayard’s fine stroke. Mrs. Carruth came clucking anxiously down, and put her hand upon her husband’s arm. Bayard looked at the two elderly people with a strange affectionateness which he did not analyze; feeling, but not acknowledging, a sudden heart-ache for ties which he had never known.

The sun was sinking, and the harbor was a sea of fire. A sea of glass it was not, for there was some wind and more tide. Really, she should not have ventured out so far. He looked over his shoulder as he gained upon her. She had not seen him, and was drifting out. Her oars lay crossed upon her lap. Her eyes were on the sky, which flung out gold and violet, crimson and pale green flame, in bars like the colors of a mighty banner. The harbor took the magnificence, and lifted it upon the hands of the short, uneasy waves.

The two little boats, the pursuing and the pursued, floated in one of those rare and unreal splendors which make this world, for the moment, seem a glorious, painless star, and the chance to live in it an ecstasy.

By the island, half a mile back, perhaps, Jane Granite in a dory rowed by the younger Trawl, silently watched the minister moving with strong strokes across the blazing harbor. Drifting out, with beautiful pose and crossed hands, was the absorbed, unconscious woman whom his racing oars chased down.

Between the glory of the water and the glory of the sky, he gained upon her, overtook her, headed her off, and brought up with a spurt beside her. Jane saw that the minister laid his hand imperiously upon the gunwale of the lady’s boat; and, it seemed, without waiting for her consent, or even lingering to ask for it, he crept into the cockle-shell, and fastened the painter of his dory to the stern. Now, between the color of the sky and the color of the sea, the two were seen to float for a melting moment--

“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran.”

“Ben,” said Jane, “let us put about, will you? I’m a little chilly.”

“Ben?” said Jane again, as they rowed under the dark shadow of the island. “Ben?” with a little loyal effort to make conversation such as lovers know, “did you ever read a poem called Kubla Khan?”

“I hain’t had time to read sence I left the grammar school,” said Ben.

“What’s up with you, anyhow?” he added, after a moment’s sullen reflection.

He looked darkly over Jane’s head towards the harbor’s mouth. At that moment Bayard was tying the painter of the dory to the stern of the shell. Jane did not look back. A slight grayness settled about her mouth; she had the protruding mouth and evident cheek-bones of the consumptive woman of the coast.

“D---- him!” said Ben Trawl.

* * * * *

Bayard had indeed crossed into Helen’s boat without so much as saying, By your leave. Her eyes had a dangerous expression, to which he paid no sort of attention.

“Didn’t you know better than to take this shell--so far--with the tide setting out?” he demanded. “Give me those oars!”

“I understand how to manage a boat,” replied the young lady coldly. She did not move.

“_Give me those oars!_” thundered Bayard.

She looked at him, and gave them.

“Don’t try to move,” he said in a softer voice. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to upset these toys. If you had taken a respectable ocean dory--I can’t see why they don’t provide them at the floats,” he complained, with the nervousness of an uneasy man. “I can manage perfectly where I am. Sit still, Miss Carruth!”

She did not look at him this time, but she sat still. He put about, and rowed steadily. For a few moments they did not exchange a word. Helen had an offended expression. She trailed her hand in the water with something like petulance. Bayard did not watch her.

Captain Hap crossed their course, rowing home in an old green dory full of small bait--pollock and tinkers. He eyed Bayard’s Harvard stroke with surprised admiration. He had seldom seen a person row like that. But he was too old a sailor to say so. As the minister swerved dexterously to starboard to free the painter of his tender from collision with the fisherman, Captain Hap gave utterance to but two words. These were:--

“Short chops!”

“Quite a sea, yes!” called Bayard cheerily.

Captain Hap scanned the keel-boat, the passenger, and the dory in tow, with discrimination.

“Lady shipwrecked?” he yelled, after some reflection.

“No, sir,” answered Helen, smiling in spite of herself; “captured by pirates.”

“Teach ye bet-ter!” howled Captain Hap. “Hadn’t oughter set out in short cho-ops! Hadn’t oughter set out in a craft like that nohow! They palm off them eggshells on boarders for bo-o-oats!”

Helen laughed outright; her eyes met Bayard’s merrily, and, if he had dared to think so, rather humbly.

“I was very angry with you,” she said.

“I can’t help that,” replied Bayard. “Your father and mother were very anxious about you.”

“Really?”

“Naturally. I was a chartered pirate, at any rate.”

“But I was in no sort of danger, you know. You’ve made a great fuss over nothing.”

“Take these oars,” observed Bayard. “Just let me see you row back to the float.”

Helen took the oars, and pulled a few strokes strongly enough. The veins stood out on her soft forehead, and her breath came hard.

“I had no idea the tide was so strong to-night. The wind seems to be the wrong way, too,” she panted.

“It was blowing you straight out to sea,” observed Bayard quietly.

“Shall I take the oars?” he added.

She pulled on doggedly for a few moments. Suddenly she flung them down.

“Why, we are not making any headway at all! We are twisting about, and--going out again.”

“Certainly.”

“It is that heavy dory! You can’t expect me to row two boats at once.”

“The dory does make some difference. But very little. See--she doesn’t draw a teaspoonful of water. Shall I take the oars?”

“If you please,” said Helen meekly.

She gave them up without looking at him, and she was a trifle pale from her exertion. Her hat was off, and the wind made rich havoc of her pretty hair. She was splashed with spray, and her boating-dress was quite wet. Bayard watched her. The sun dropped, and the color on the harbor began to fade.

“I suppose you came for the report?” she asked suddenly. “I stayed in all the afternoon. I couldn’t be expected to wait indefinitely, you know!”

“I could not possibly set the hour. I am much overworked. I should beg your pardon,” said Bayard in his gentlest way.

“You _are_ overworked,” answered Helen, in her candid voice. “And I am an idle, useless woman. It wouldn’t have hurt me a bit to wait your leisure. But I’m not-- ... you see ... I’m not used to it.”

“I must remind you again, that I no longer move in good society,” said Bayard, looking straight at her. “You must extend to me as much tolerance as you do to other working men.”

“Yes,” returned Helen; “we always wait a week for a carpenter, and ten days for the plumbers. Anyhow, Johnny’s mother is in the Widows’ Home. She’s as snug as a clam in a shell. She says she won’t run away again till I’ve been to see her.”

“How in the world did you manage?” asked Bayard admiringly.

“Oh, I don’t just know,” replied Helen, clasping her hands behind her head; “I made myself lovely, that’s all.”

“That might be enough, I should fancy,” ventured the young man under his breath.

“I took her shopping,” said Helen.

“Took her _shopping_!”

“Why, yes. She wanted to buy some mourning. She said Johnny’s father had been dead so long, her black was all worn out. She wanted fresh crape. So I took her round the stores, and got her some.”

“Bought her crape?”

“Yes. I got her a crape veil--oh, and a bonnet. She’s the happiest mourner you ever saw. She went back to the Widows’ Home like a spring lamb. She wore a chocolate calico dress with red spots on it, and this crape veil. You can’t think how she looked! But she’s perfectly contented. She’ll stay awhile now. She says they wouldn’t give her any mourning at the Home. She said that was all she had ‘agin’ ’em.’”

“Oh, these widows!” groaned Bayard. “We got two starving women in there by the hardest work, last spring, and one left in a week. She said it was too lonesome; she wanted to live with folks. The other one said it ‘depressed’ her. A Windover widow is a problem in sociology.”

“Johnny’s mother is the other kind of woman; I can see that,” replied Helen. “She sits by herself, and puts her face in her hands. She doesn’t even cry. But she takes it out in crape. You can’t think how happy she is in that veil.”

“Your political economy is horrible,” laughed Bayard, “but your heart is as warm as”--

“I saw Mari and Joey,” interrupted Helen, “and Job Slip. I stayed two hours. Job was as sober as you are. They invited me to dinner. I suppose they were thankful to be rid of that poor old lady.”

“Did you stay?”

“Of course I did. We had pork gravy, and potatoes--oh, and fried cunners. I sat beside Joey. I believe that child is as old as She. He’s a reincarnation of some drowned ancestor who went fishing ages ago, and never came back. Did you ever notice his resemblance to a mackerel?”

“I hadn’t thought of it in that light. I see now what it was. It takes you to discover it!”

“Johnny’s mother looks like a cod, poor thing!” continued Helen. “I don’t wonder. I should think she would. I’m sure I should in her place.”

“You are incorrigible!” said Bayard, laughing in spite of himself. “And yet--you’ve done a better morning’s work than anybody in Windover has done here for a month!”

“I’m going to take tea with Johnny’s mother next week,” observed Helen--“at the Widows’ Home, you know. But I’ve promised to take Joey to the circus first.”

“You are perfectly refreshing!” sighed Bayard delightedly.

“Mr. Bayard,” said Helen, with a change of manner as marked yet as subtle as the motion of the wave that fell to make way for the next, against the bobbing bows of the empty dory, “I had a long talk with Job Slip.”

“You say you found him sober?”

“As sober as a Cesarea trustee. But the way that man feels to you is something you haven’t an idea of. I thought of that verse, you know, about love ‘passing the love of women.’ It is infatuation. It is worship. It is enough to choke you. Why, I cried when I heard him talk! And I don’t cry, you know, very often. And I’m not ashamed to own it, either. It made me feel ashamed to be alive--in such a world--why, Mr. Bayard!” Helen unclasped her hands from the back of her head, and thrust them out towards him, as if they were an argument.

“Why, I thought this earth was a pleasant place! I thought life was a delightful thing!... If the rest of it is like this town--Windover is a world of woe, and you are one of the sons of God to these unhappy people!”

She said this solemnly, more solemnly than he had ever heard her say anything before. He laid down his oars, and took off his hat. He could not answer, and he did not try.

She saw how much moved he was, and she made a little gesture, as if she tossed something that weighed heavily, away.