Part 14

“You see,” she interposed, “I’ve never done this kind of thing. I’m not a good Professor’s daughter. I didn’t like it. I went through an attack of the missionary spirit when I was fifteen, and had a Sunday-school class--ten big boys; all red, and eight of them freckled. We were naming classes one Sunday, and my boys whistled ‘Yankee Doodle’ when the superintendent prayed, and then asked if they might be called the lilies of the valley. I told them they weren’t fit to be called red sorrel. So after that I gave them up. I’ve never tried it since. I’m of no more use in the world--in this _awful_ world--than the artificial pansies on my hat.”

Helen picked up her straw hat from the bottom of the boat, and tied it on her head, with a little sound that was neither a laugh nor a sigh.

It was growing dark, fast. They were nearly at the float, now. Bayard laid down his oars. The headlights were leaping out all over the harbor. The wind had gone down with the sun. Boats crept in like tired people, through the sudden calm, to anchor for the night. The evening steamer came in from the city, and the long waves of her wake rolled upon the beach, and tossed the little boats. The sea drew a few long, deep breaths.

“The trouble with me, you see,” said Helen, “is just what I told you. I am not spiritual.”

“You are something better--you are altogether womanly!” said the young preacher quickly.

He seized his oars, and rowed in, as if they were shipwrecked. The old clam-digger was hauling his lobster-pots straight across their course. As Bayard veered to avoid him, he could be heard singing:--

“The woman’s ashore, The child’s at the door, The man’s at the wheel.

“Storm on the track, Fog at the back, Death at the keel.

“You, mate, or me-- Which shall it be?”--

The old clam-digger stopped, when he saw the lady in the boat. It was now quite dark. Bayard and Helen were the last people to land at the float. He gave her his hand in silence. She stood by, while he helped the keeper of the float up with the two boats. He coughed a little as he did so, and she said, rather sharply:--

“Tim! you should keep two men here, to do that work.”

Tim apologized, grumbling, and the two walked on up the pier together; still alone. At the door of the cottage, she asked him, rather timidly, if he would come in. But he excused himself, and hurried away.

When he found himself far from the hotel, and well on the way to his lodgings, Bayard drew the long breath of a man who is escaping danger. He experienced a kind of ecstatic terror. He thought of her--he thought of her till he could think no more, but fell into an ocean of feeling, tossing and deep. It seemed to have no soundings. He drowned himself in it with a perilous delight.

What would a lonely fate be, if a woman capable of understanding the highest, and serving it, capacious for tenderness, and yielding it, a woman warm, human, sweet, and as true as one’s belief in her, should pour the precious current of her love into a long life’s work? Why, a man would be a god! He would climb the inaccessible. He would achieve the undreamed and the unknown. He would not know where consecration ended, and where heaven began.

“He would be a freer man than I am,” thought Bayard, as he passed, between the larkspurs and the feverfew, up Mrs. Granite’s garden.

Mrs. Granite met him at the door; she held a kerosene lamp high in one hand; with the other she handed to him a soiled and crumpled bit of paper.

“A boy left it here, sir, not ten minutes ago, and he said you was to read it as soon as you came home. I don’t know the boy. I never saw him before, but it seemed to be something quite partikkelar.”

Bayard held the message to the lamp and read:--

A pore man in distres would take it kindly of the minester to mete him as sune as possibel to-nite to Ragged Rock. i am a miserbul Drunkhard and i want to Knock Off. i heer when folks talk with you they stop Drinkin. i wish youde talk to me so I would stop Yours JACK HADDOCK.

XVI.

Bayard re-read this message thoughtfully. He could hardly have told why it perplexed him. Up and down the shores and streets of Windover no cry of misery or of guilt had ever yet lifted itself to him in vain. Such appeals were common enough. Often it would happen that a stranger would stop him in the street, and use much the same naïve language: “I hear when you talk to folks they stop drinking. I wish you’d talk to me.” Contrary to his custom in such matters, he showed this slip of paper to Mrs. Granite.

“Mr. Bayard, sir,” she said, with that prompt feminine fear which sometimes takes the place of reliable good sense, “don’t you go a step!”

Bayard did not reply. He turned away musing, and paced up and down between the larkspurs. True, the place was lonely, and the hour late. But the vagaries of disgraced men are many, and nothing was more possible than that some fisherman, not wholly sober, and not half drunk, should take it into his befuddled brain that an interview with the minister located at a safe distance from nagging wife, crying child, or jeering messmate, or, let us say, far removed from the jaws of Trawl’s door, should work the magic or the miracle for which the morally defective are always waiting.

“I see no reason why I should not comply with this request,” he said decidedly.

“Mr. Bayard, sir,” urged Mrs. Granite, “it’s a thing I don’t like to be her who tells you, but it’s time somebody did. There’s them in this town wouldn’t stop at nothing, they have that feeling to you.”

“To _me_?” cried Bayard, opening his hazel eyes as wide as a child’s.

“Rum done it,” stammered Mrs. Granite, instinctively using the three familiar words which most concisely covered the ground. “It’s your temperance principles. They ain’t pop’lar. They affect your standing in this community.”

This was the accepted phrase in Windover for all such cases made and provided. It was understood to contain the acme of personal peril or disgrace. To talk to a man about “your standing in this community” was equivalent to an insult or a scandal. Poor Mrs. Granite, an affectionate and helpless parrot, reëchoed this terrible language, and trembled. She felt as if she had said to the minister, Your social ruin is complete for all time, throughout the civilized world.

“Not that it makes any difference to _us_,” sobbed Mrs. Granite; “we set just as much by you. But your standing is affected in this community. There’s them that hates you, sir, more shame to ’em, more’n the Old Boy himself. Mr. Bayard, Mr. Bayard, don’t you go to Ragged Rock alone, sir, this time o’ night to meet no tom-fool of a drunkard anxious about his soul. He don’t own such a thing to his name! All he’s got is a rum-soaked sponge, he’s mopped up whiskey with all his born days!”

“Your drinks (if not your metaphors) are getting a little mixed, dear Mrs. Granite,” laughed Bayard.

“_Sir?_” said Mrs. Granite.

“But still I must say, there is some sense in your view of the case--Ah, here’s Jane; and Ben with her. We’ll put the case to--No. I have it. Mrs. Granite, to please you, I will take Ben Trawl along with me. Will that set you at rest?--Here, Trawl. Just read this message, will you? Something about it looks a little queer, and Mrs. Granite is so kind as to worry about me. What do you make of it?”

“Oh, you’ve got home so soon, have you?” said Trawl rather sullenly.

In the evening his eyebrows met more heavily than ever across his forehead; they looked as if they had been corked for some ugly masquerade. He glanced from under them, coldly, at the minister; read the note, and was about to tear it into strips.

“I’ll take it, thank you,” said Bayard quietly, holding out his hand.

“Mr. Bayard,” said Jane, who had not spoken before, “I hope you will pay no attention to this message.”

She spoke in a voice so low as to be almost inarticulate.

“Oh, I’ll go with him, if he’s afraid,” said Trawl, with that accent which falls just so far short of a sneer that a man may not decently notice it.

“I incline to think it is wise to take a witness to this adventure,” replied Bayard serenely. “But I need not trouble you, Mr. Trawl. Pray don’t exert yourself to oblige me.”

“It’s no exertion,” said Ben, with a change of tone. “Come along!”

He strode out into the street and Bayard, after a moment’s hesitation, did the same, shutting the garden gate behind him. Jane Granite opened it, and followed them for a little way; she seemed perplexed and distressed; she did not speak, but trotted silently, like a dog, in the dark.

“Go back!” said Trawl, stopping short. Jane slunk against a fence, and stopped.

“Go back, I say!” cried Trawl.

“It is natural that she should want to come. She feels anxious about you,” observed Bayard kindly.

“Go back to your mother, and stay there!” commanded Trawl, stamping his foot.

Jane turned and obeyed, and vanished. The two men walked on in silence. They came quickly through the village and down the Point, turning thence to cross the downs that raised their round shoulders, an irregular gray outline against the sky. Bayard glanced back. It looked black and desolate enough ahead of him. Below and behind him the life of the summer-seekers stirred softly, like the figures in a gay game, or old-fashioned walking-dance. The hotels blazed cheerfully; the piazzas were full and merry; in the parlors people were playing and singing. He could not see the lights of the Flying Jib from where he stood; this disappointed him, and he walked on. The music from the Mainsail piano followed him. There was a parlor concert--a woman’s voice--a soprano solo--ah! The great serenade!

“Komm, beglücke mich!”

The strain seemed to chase him, like a cry, like an entreaty, almost like a sob. His heart leaped, as if soft arms had been thrown around him. He stopped and listened, till the song had ceased.

“That is good music,” he said aloud, not knowing what he said, but oppressed by the dogged silence which his escort maintained.

“Good enough,” said Ben roughly. The two walked on, and neither said anything more. It was now quite dark and still around them. The rough, broken surface of the rocky downs made traveling difficult; but both men were familiar with the way, and lost no time upon it. The sky was cloudy, and the sea was dark. The ebbing tide met the deserted beach with a sigh. The headlights in the harbor looked far off, and of the town not a glimmer could be seen. Ben strode on in sullen silence. Bayard watched him with some discomfort, but nothing like a sensation of fear had yet reached his nerves.

“This fellow chose a lonely place for a pastoral visit,” he observed at length, as they approached the little beach made memorable by the wreck of the Clara Em.

“Wanted to stump you,” said Ben, with an unpleasant laugh. “Wanted to dare you, you know--to see if you’d show game. It’s a way they have, these toughs who meddle with parsons. They like to make out a big story, and tell it round the saloons. Probably the whole thing’s a put-up job.”

“That is more than possible, of course. But I’d rather investigate three put-up jobs than neglect one real need of one miserable man. That is my business, you see, Ben. Yours is to ruin people. Mine is to save them. We each attend to our own affairs, that’s all.”

“D---- you!” cried Ben, suddenly facing about. “That’s just it! You don’t attend to your own affairs! You meddle with mine, and that’s what’s the matter! I’ll teach you to mind your own business!”

Before Bayard could cry out or move, he felt the other’s hands at his throat.

XVII.

Bayard stood so still--with the composure of a man not without athletic training, determined to waste no strength in useless struggle--that Trawl instinctively loosened his clutch. Was the minister strangling? This was not Ben’s immediate purpose. His fingers relaxed.

“Ah,” said Bayard quietly, “so you are Jack Haddock.”

“I wrote that note. You might have known it if you hadn’t been a ---- fool.”

“I might have known it--yes; I see. But I took you for a decent fellow. I couldn’t be expected to suspect you were--what you are. Well, Mr. Trawl, perhaps you will explain your business with me in some less uncomfortable manner.”

He shook Ben off with a strong thrust, and folded his arms.

“Come,” he said. “Out with it!”

“My game’s up,” replied Ben between his teeth. “I can’t do what I set out to, now. There’s too many witnesses in the case.”

“You meant to push me off Ragged Rock, perhaps?” asked Bayard quietly. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I see--it would not have been difficult. A man can be taken unawares in the dark, and as you say, there would have been no witnesses.”

“You come home too soon,” growled Ben. “I counted on getting away and bein’ here to welcome you, and nobody the wiser; d---- them two women! I supposed you’d stay awhile with your girl. A man would, in our kind of folks. Lord! you don’t seem to belong to _any_ kind of folks that I can see. I don’t know what to make of you. ---- you! ---- you! ---- you! I’d like to see you go yellin’ and bub--ble--in’ down to your drownin’! I’m heavier’n you be, come to the tug. I could do it now, inside of ten minutes.”

“And hang for it in ten months,” observed Bayard, smiling.

“I could get a dozen men to swear to an alibi!” cried Trawl. “You ain’t so popular in this town as to make that a hard job. You’ve got the whole liquor interest ag’in’ you. Lord! the churches would back ’em, too, that’s the joke of it!”

He laughed savagely.

Bayard made no reply. He had winced in the dark at the words. They were worse than the grip at his throat.

“When you get ready, Ben, suppose you explain what you have against me?” he suggested, after an uncomfortable pause.

“You’ve took my girl!” roared Ben.

“Your girl? _Your_ girl?”

Bayard gasped, from the sheer intellectual shock of the idea.

“You’ve made love to her, behind my back! You’ve turned her head! She ain’t no eyes left in her for anybody but you, ---- you! And I’ve ben keepin’ company with her for four years. You’ve got my girl away from me, and you’d oughter drown for it. Drownin’ ’s too good for you!”

“Look here, Ben,” said Bayard. “Are you drunk?”

“We don’t drink--me, nor my father. And you know it. We ain’t such ---- fools!”

“It is a waste of the English language to add,” observed the preacher, with an accession of his natural dignity, which was not without its effect upon Ben Trawl, “that I have never regarded Miss Granite--for a moment--in the extraordinary light which you suggest. It seems to me unnecessary to point out to you the unnaturalness--I may be frank, and say the impossibility--of such a supposition.”

“---- you!” raved Ben, “ain’t she good enough for you, then?”

“Ben Trawl,” said the minister imperiously, “this nonsense has gone far enough. If you have nothing more reasonable to say to me, we may as well stop talking, for I’m going home. If you have, I’ll stay and hear it out.”

Bayard calmly seated himself upon the base of Ragged Rock, and took off his hat.

“What a warm, pleasant night it is!” he said in a tone so changed that Ben Trawl stared.

“Plucky, anyhow,” thought Ben. But he said: “I ain’t got half through yet. I’ve got another score ag’in’ you. You’ve took the girl, and now you’re takin’ the business.”

“Ah,” replied the preacher; “that’s another matter.”

“You own up to it, do you? ---- you!”

“Assuredly,” answered Bayard. “I am doing my best to ruin your business. It is a pleasure to hear you admit it. It has gone further than I supposed.”

“It _has_ gone further ’n you suppose!” echoed Ben malignantly, “and it _will_ go further ’n you suppose! Me and Father have stood it long enough. There’s them that backs us that you never give one of your ---- holy thoughts to. I give you warning on the spot, Mr. Bayard. You stop just where you be. Meddle with our business one inch further, and you’ll hear from the whole liquor interest of Windover. We’ll blow you into eternity if you don’t let us alone.”

“I should count that,” replied the preacher gently, “the greatest honor of my life.”

“Anyhow,” said Ben in a calmer tone, “if you don’t let our business be, we’ll ruin yourn.”

“That is quite possible,” returned Bayard; “but it won’t be without a big tussle.”

“You don’t believe me,” sneered Ben; “you think we ain’t up to it.”

“Do you suppose, Ben,” asked the preacher quietly, “that an educated man would deliberately choose the course that I have chosen to pursue in this town without informing himself on all branches of the subject that he is handling? Do you suppose I don’t know what the liquor interest is capable of when attacked by Christian temperance? There hasn’t been an outrage, a persecution, a crime,--no, not a murder committed in the name of rum and the devil against the cause of decency and sobriety in this country for years, that I haven’t traced its history out, and kept the record of it. Come up to my study, and see the correspondence and clippings I have collected on this matter. There are two shelves full, Ben.”

“Lord!” said Ben. His jaw dropped a little. He felt the inferiority of the ignorant man before education, the weakness of moral debility before moral vigor. He turned and took a few steps towards the town. The minister followed him amiably, and the two strode on in silence.

“He don’t scare worth a cent,” thought Ben. Aloud he said:--

“So you’re goin’ to fight us, be you?”

“Till I die,” answered Bayard solemnly; “and if I die!”

“You won’t take no warnin’ then?” asked Ben with a puzzled air.

“Neither from you, Ben, nor from any other man.”

“The worse for you, then!” returned Ben in an ugly tone.

“I’ll risk it,” replied Bayard serenely.

“There’s them that says you’re goin’ to fight it out at the polls,” said Ben, more sullenly now than savagely. “Folks says you’re goin’ to get away Father’s license.”

“I hadn’t thought of it till this minute!” exclaimed the preacher. “But it would be a good idea.”

Ben made an inarticulate noise in his throat. Bayard instinctively thrust out his elbow; he thought for the moment that Ben would spring upon him out of sheer rage. They were out on the open downs, now; but still only the witness of the sky and sea and rocks remained to help him.

“Look here,” said Ben, suddenly stopping. “Are you going to tell of me?”

“That you were so uncivil as to put your hands on my throat, Ben?--I haven’t decided.”

“Not that _I_ care a ----!” muttered Ben. “But Jane”--

“I shall never mention any circumstance of this--rather unpleasant evening--which would bring Miss Granite’s name into publicity,” replied the preacher quickly. “She is a good, modest girl. She should be sheltered and cared for. You might better toss a woman off Ragged Rock--as you intended to do by me--than to turn the gossip of Windover loose upon her.”

“It _is_ a hell of a town, if you come to that,” said Ben with calm conviction.

“She is much too good for you, Ben Trawl,” remarked Bayard quite politely, as if he were offering the other a glass of lemonade.

“Lord!” groaned Ben, writhing under the minister’s manner. “Don’t you suppose that’s the worst on’t?”

“I think I’ll cut across here towards the hotel,” observed Bayard pleasantly. “We seem to have talked out, for this time. Good-night, Ben.”

“Say,” said Ben, “why don’t you spout temperance to me? Why ain’t you talked religion? Why ain’t you set out to convert me? I give you chance enough!”

“You are an intelligent man,” replied the preacher; “you know what you are about. I don’t waste sacred powder on useless shot.”

“Queer Dick, you,” mused Ben. “It’s just as I said. You don’t belong to _any_ kind of folks I ever see before. I can’t make you out.”

“Next time you want to murder me, Ben,” called the minister cheerily, “don’t try anonymous traps! Show up like a man, and have it out in the open air!”

He walked on towards the beach. Ben watched him for a perplexed and sullen moment, then took his course thoughtfully in the direction of the town.

When the two men had disappeared from the dark map of the downs, a woman’s figure swiftly and quietly crossed it. Jane Granite had followed the minister like the spaniel that she was, and, hidden in the shadows of Ragged Rock, thinking to save him, God knew how, from Heaven knew what fate, had overheard the interview from beginning to end.

XVIII.

A fiery July was followed by a scorching August. There was a long drought, and simooms of fine, irritating dust. The gasping town and inland country flocked to the coast in more than the usual force. The hotels brimmed over. Even Windover fanned herself, and lay in hammocks lazily, watching for the two o’clock east wind to stir the topsails of the schooners trying under full canvas to crawl around the Point. In Angel Alley the heat was something unprecedented; and the devil shook hands with discomfort as he is fain to, and made new comrades.

Bayard was heavily overworked. He gave himself few pleasures, after the fashion of the man; and the summer people at the Point knew him not. He was not of them, nor of their world. Afterwards, he recalled, with a kind of pain lacking little of anguish, how few in number had been his evenings in the cool parlor of the cottage, where the lace curtains blew in and out through the purple twilight, or on the impearled harbor, in the dory, when the sun went down, and he drifted with her between earth and heaven, between light and reflection, in a glamour of color, in alternations of quiet, dangerous talk, and of more dangerous silence; brief, stolen hours when duty seemed a dimming dream, and human joy the only reality, the sole value, the decreed and eternal end of life. Upon this rare and scanty substitute for happiness he fed; and from it he fled.

Between his devotions and his desertions the woman stood mute and inscrutable. And while they still moved apart, saying, “The summer is before us,” lo, the petals of the Cape roses had flown on the hot winds, the goldenrod was lifting its sword of flame on the undulating gray downs, and the summer was spent.

And yet, at every march and countermarch in the drill of duty, he was aware of her. It could not be said that she ever overstepped the invisible line which he had elected to draw between them; though it might be said that she had the fine pride which did not seem to see it. Helen had the quiet, maidenly reserve of an elder and more delicate day than ours. To throw her young enthusiasm into his work without obtruding herself upon his attention, was a difficult procedure, for which she had at once the decorum and the wit.