Part 23

“Get back there!” commanded the policeman. “Keep back, I say! This is no place nor time for the likes of _you_ to pester the minister!”

“Let her come!” ordered Bayard authoritatively. For it was Lena. The girl was pale, and her handsome eyes had a ferocious look.

“I’ve got something to tell him,” announced Lena with calm determination. “It’s important, or I wouldn’t bother him, is it likely? I ain’t no such a fool nor flat.”

She approached, at Bayard’s beck, and said a few words in a tone so low that even the wife upon his arm did not understand them.

“Lena still feels a little anxious,” said Bayard aloud, distinctly. “Have you any wishes to express, Helen?”

But Helen, smiling, shook her head. She felt exalted and not afraid. She would have gone with him to death; but she did not think about death. She did not believe that his angels would suffer a pebble of Windover to dash against him; nor that a curl of his gold-brown head would come to harm. His mood ruled her utterly. His own exaltation, his beauty, his calm, his spiritual power, made clouds before her eyes, on which he moved as a god.

So they entered the chapel, together. As they did so, Bayard turned, and looked back. Before all the people there, the preacher lifted his hat to Lena, and passed on.

The girl’s dark face dropped upon her breast, as if she made obeisance before him; then she lifted it with the touching pride of lost self-respect regained. Her lips moved. “He thinks I’m fit, at last,” said Lena.

The preacher and his young wife passed through the rose-wreathed door, and into the chapel. Roses were there, too; their pale, pink lamps burned all over the chapel, wherever hand could reach, or foot could climb. This was the decoration chosen to welcome the June bride to Windover--the people’s flower, the blossom of the rocks and downs.

It was a pleasant chapel. The library, the gymnasium, the bowling-alley, opened from the prayer-room. Pictures and books and games and lounging-places for tired fellows were part of Bayard’s Christianity. Many a fisherman, smoking in the room below, where an oath turned a man out, and a coarse phrase was never heard, would listen to the singing of old hymns, above him, and lay his pipe down, and wonder what the music meant, and catch a line he used to hear his mother sing, and so steal up to hear the rest; and sing the loudest of them all, perhaps, before the hymn was done.

Bayard moved up among his silent people, to his place. His wife went with him, and he led her to her mother’s side, at his right hand.

“In any event,” he thought, “I could reach her in a moment.”

His eyes sought hers for that instant. She neither blushed nor paled, but had her sweet composure. In her bridal white, she looked like the lily of his life’s work, the angel of his worried heart. It seemed to him as if peace and hope came with her, as purity and honor dwelt in her presence. He felt happier and stronger for knowing that she was so near him, now, and, with a brightening brow he gave the signal for opening the evening’s service.

It was a short and pleasant service. The great Professor, cordially recognized by the rough audience that he had not allowed to conquer him last Sunday, contributed his most distinguished manner, his best good sense, and the least possible evidence of his theology to the dedicating hour. The old moderator and the pastor’s classmate from across the Cape added their heartiest help. Most of the congregation omitted to notice that the clergymen from the city were not present. They were not missed. Who could say if they had been invited to dedicate Emanuel Bayard’s chapel? He had pulled along without them for three years. He was incapable of resentment, but it was still possible that habit had its way with the missionary, and that, in his hour of success he had simply forgotten them, as in his time of distress and failure they had forgotten him. Who could blame him?

But all the little trouble of the past had melted from his mind and heart; both were clear and happy when he rose, at last, to address his people. His delicate lips had but parted to speak to them, when there started such a storm of welcome from the fishermen as well-nigh swept his self-possession from him. He was not prepared for it, and he seemed almost disturbed. From aisle to aisle, from wall to wall, the wind of sound rose and rolled upon him. At last it became articulate, and here and there words defined themselves.

“God bless him!”

“Bless our dear young parson!”

“Windover fishermen stand by him every time!”

“Blessin’s on him, anyhow!”

“Christlove’s good enough for us!”

But when he smiled upon them, they grew quiet, as they had done once before--that evening after the wreck and rescue off Ragged Rock; for these two were the only occasions when the applause of his people had got the better of their pastor.

When he began to speak, it was not without emotion, but in a voice so low that the house had to hold its breath to hear him.

He began by thanking the fishermen of Windover for their trust and their friendship. Both, he said, he valued, and more than they would ever know. Of his own struggles and troubles, of the bitter years that he had toiled among them, he said no word. He spoke of the kindness of Windover, not of its neglect. He spoke of the strength and the goodness of the city, rather than of its weakness and its error. He spoke of the warm heart of the people, of their readiness to help any need which they understood, and in whose claim they believed. He told how generous they were in emergencies. “You give money,” he said, “more lavishly than any town I have ever known. When the gales have struck, and the fleets gone down, and when, with widows and orphans starving on my heart and hands, I have asked for bread, Windover has never given them a stone. Your poor have spent themselves utterly upon your poorest, and your rich have not refused. Windover gives gloriously,” said Bayard, “and I am glad and proud to say so.”

Their faults, he told them, they had, and he was not there to condone what he had never overlooked. One, above the rest, they had to answer for; and what that was--did he need to name?

“It is not your sin alone,” he said firmly. “It is the sin of seaport towns; it is the sin of cities; it is the sin of New England; it is the sin of the Nation;--but _it is the sin of Windover_, and my business is with Windover sins. I have fought it since I came among you, without an hour’s wavering of purpose, and without an hour’s fear of the result; and at all costs, at any cost, I shall fight it till I go from you. For God has set me among you, not to minister to your self-satisfaction, but to your needs.”

Bayard paused here, and regarded his people with a long look. Their faces blurred before him for a moment, for his heart was full. He saw them all, in the distinctness with which the public speaker perceives familiar sights; every trifle upon the map of his audience started out.

He saw Captain Hap, anxious and wrinkled, doing usher’s duty by the door--Captain Hap, neither pious nor godless, but ready to live for the parson or to die for him, and caring little which; the good fellow, true with the allegiance of age and a loyal nature--dear Captain Hap!

Bayard saw Job Slip, pale with the chronic pallor of the reformed drunkard--poor Job, who drank not now, neither did he taste; but bore the thirst of his terrible desert, trusting in the minister and God Almighty,--in the succession of the phrase.

Mari was there, incapable and patient, her face and figure stamped with the indefinable something that marks the drunkard’s wife. And Joey, serious and old--little Joey! Bob was there, and Jean, and Tony, and all the familiar faces from the wharves. Mrs. Granite, in her rusty black, sat tearfully in a front settee, with Jane beside her. Jane looked at the minister, before all the people, as she never ventured to look at home. But nobody noticed Jane. Bayard did but glance at her pinched, adoring face; he dared not dwell upon it.

Ben Trawl was not to be seen in the audience. But Lena was. She stood the service through, for she had come in too late to find a seat; she stood behind Johnny’s mother, who wore Helen’s crape bonnet and veil, poor old lady, with a brown bombazine dress. Lena had a worried look. She did not remove her eyes from the preacher. Lena sang that day, when the people started “the minister’s hymn,”--

“I need Thee every hour, Stay Thou near by.”

Her fine voice rose like a solo; it had a certain solitariness about it which was touching to hear.

“Temptations lose their power When Thou art nigh.”

The melody of the hymn died away into the hush in which Bayard rose again, for it came to his heart to bless his people and his chapel in one of his rare prayers.

“Lord,” he said, “Thou art the God of the sea and its perils; of the land and its sorrow. Draw near to these sea-people who tread upon the shore of Thy mercy. I dedicate them to Thee. Father, take them from my hands! Lift them up! Hold them, that they fall not. Comfort their troubles. Forgive their sins. Take them! Take my people from my heart!... Lord, I consecrate this house of worship, for their sakes, and in Christ’s name, and for Christ’s love, to Thee, and to Thy service.... Father! Thou knowest how I have loved this people.”...

Bayard’s voice broke. It was the only time--in all those years. His prayer remained unfinished. The sobs of his people answered him; and his silence was his benediction upon them.

The audience moved out quietly. It was now dark. The lights in the chapel had been noiselessly lighted. The jets of the illuminated words above the door were blazing.

The Professor and the clergymen and Helen’s mother stepped apart and out into the street; none of them spoke to Bayard, for his look forbade them. The Professor of Theology was greatly moved. Signs of tears more natural than evangelical were on his aged face. Bayard, lingering but a moment, came down the aisle with his wife upon his arm.

“Love,” she whispered, “it is over, and all is well.”

“Yes,” he answered, smiling, “it is over, and it is well.”

They came down and out upon the steps. Bayard stood uncovered beneath the white and scarlet lights, which spelled the words,--

“THE LOVE OF CHRIST.”

He gave one glance down Angel Alley. It was packed; his people were massed to protect him. Beyond them, marshaled into the darkness and scarcely distinguishable from it, hovered certain sullen groups of frowning men. Not a hand was raised. Not a cry was heard. No. There was to be no mob. He had to meet, not violence, but mute and serried Hate.

She clung to his arm with a start. She looked up into his face. Its more than earthly radiance hushed the cry upon her lips. He was transfigured before her. For that moment, all the people--they who loved and they who loved him not--saw him glorified, there, beneath the sacred words whose pure and blazing fires seemed to them the symbol of his soul.

Then, from the darkest dark of Angel Alley a terrible oath split the air. Something struck him; and he fell.

XXIX.

Half a thousand men gave chase; but the assailant had escaped to the common shelter of the coasting town. He had taken to the water.

It was now quite dark; clouds had gathered; the wind had risen suddenly; thunder was heard. A fierce gust tore the dust of Angel Alley, and hurled it after the fleeing criminal; as if even the earth that he trod rejected him. In this blinding and suffocating whirlwind the pursuers stumbled over each other, and ran at haphazard. The police swept every skulking-place, dividing their forces between the Alley and the docks. But their man, who was shrewd enough, had evaded them; it was clear that he had marked out an intelligent map of escape, and had been able to follow it.

The baffled police, thinking at least to pacify the angry people behind them, kept up that appearance of energy, with that absence of expectation, for which their race is distinguished.

An officer who was stealthily studying the docks far to the westward, and alone, suddenly stopped. A cry for help reached him; and it was a woman’s cry. The voice kept up an interrupted iteration:--

“Police! Help!--Murder! Sergeant!--Help! Help!” as if choked off, or strangled in the intervals.

The sergeant, following the sound as well as he could, leaped down the long, empty wharf from whose direction the cry seemed to come, and peered over the slimy edge. The storm was passing noisily up the sky, and the darkness was of the deepest.

Out of its hollow a girl’s voice uprose:--

“Sergeant! Sergeant! He’s drowning me! But I’ve got him!” and bubbled away into silence.

At that moment there was lightning; and the outlines of two figures struggling in the water could be distinctly seen. These two persons were Lena and Ben Trawl. They seemed to have each other in a mutual death-grip. The girl’s hands were at the man’s throat. He dashed her under and under the water. But her clutch did not relax by a finger. He held her down. But Lena held on.

“After I’ve strangled you!” gasped Lena.

“---- you,” muttered the man. “Drown, then!”

Her head went under; her mouth filled; this time she could not struggle up; her ears rang; her brain burst. But the little fingers on the big throat clutched on. Then she felt herself caught from above--air came, and breath with it--and Ben swore faintly.

“Undo your hands, Lena,” said the sergeant. “We’ve got him. You don’t want to hang him before his time.”

Another flash of lightning revealed the sea and sky, the docks and the officers, and Ben, purple and breathing hard, stretched upon the wharf. Lena heard the snap of the handcuffs upon his wrists; and then she heard and saw no more.

The sergeant touched the girl’s dripping and unconscious figure with a respect never shown to Lena in Windover police circles before.

“She might not come to, yet,” he said; “she’s nigh enough to a drowned girl. Get a woman, can’t you, somebody?”

“The man’s all we can manage,” replied a brother officer. “Get him to the station the back way--here! Give a hand there! Quick! We’ll have lynch-law here in just about ten minutes, if you ain’t spry. Hark! D’ye hear that?”

A muffled roar came down the throat of Angel Alley. It grew, and approached. It was the cry of all Windover raging to avenge the Christian hero whom it learned, too late, to honor.

* * * * *

“Anyhow, he’ll hang for it,” muttered Lena, when she came to herself in her decent room. Johnny’s mother was moaning over her. Lena pushed the old woman gently away, and commanded the retreating officer,

“Say, won’t he? Out with it!”

“Well,” replied the officer in a comfortable tone, “a good deal depends. Liquor men ain’t skerce in this county. He’d get twenty witnesses to swear to an alibi as easy as he’d get one.”

“Let ’em swear,” said Lena. “I see him do it. I saw him heave the stone.”

“That might alter the case, and again it mightn’t,” replied the officer; “it would depend on the value of the testimony--previous reputation, and so on.”

Lena groaned.

“But I caught him by the arm! I stood alongside of him. I was watching for it. I thought I’d be able to stop him. I’m pretty strong. I grabbed him--but he flung me off and stamped on me. I see him heave the rock. See! There’s the mark, where he kicked me. Then he ran, and I after him. I can swear to it before earth and heaven. I see him fling that rock!”

“You see,” observed the officer, “it ain’t a case of manslaughter just yet. The minister was breathing when they moved him.”

* * * * *

They carried him to his own rooms, for it was not thought possible to move him further. He had not spoken nor stirred, but his pulse indicated that a good reserve of life remained in him. The wound was in the lung. The stone was a large and jagged one, with a cruel edge. It had struck with malignant power, and by one of those extraordinary aims which seem to be left for hate and chance to achieve.

His wife had caught him as he fell. She had uttered one cry; after that, her lips had opened only once, and only to say that she assented to her father’s proposal for the removal of her husband to Mrs. Granite’s house, and that she entreated them to find some gentle method of transportation over the rough road. For Windover was a town of many churches, but of no hospital.

Oddly, the only quite coherent thought she had was of a man she had heard about, a carpenter, who fell from a staging on the other side of the Cape. He was put into an express cart and driven home, a seven-mile gallop, over the rudest road in the State, to his wife; naturally, he was dead when he got there. Bayard had been called to see the widow.

Captain Hap stepped up (on tiptoe, as if he had been in a sick-room), and whispered to the surgeon who had been summoned to Angel Alley.

“That will do,” said the surgeon; “it has never been tried, that I know of, but it is worth trying--most modern ideas are--if practicable.”

“The fishermen hev cleared the car, the company has cleared the track, and the motor man is one of his people,” said Captain Hap; “an’ there’s enough of us to carry him from here to heaven so--so lovin’ly he’d never feel a jolt.”

The old captain made no effort to wipe the tears which rained down his wrinkled cheeks. He and Job Slip, with Mr. Bond and Bob and Tony, took hold of the stretcher; they looked about, to choose, out of a hundred volunteers, the sixth strong hand.

The Reverend George Fenton, agitated and trembling, forced his way through the parting crowd, and pleaded piteously to be allowed to offer his assistance in carrying his wounded classmate.

“I have never lifted a hand to help him since I came to Windover,” cried Fenton in the voice of a man who would rather that the whole world heard what he said and knew how he felt. “Let me have this chance before it is too late!... I’m not worthy to touch his bier,” added Fenton brokenly.

They gave way to his pleading, and it was done as he asked. Thus the wounded man was carried gently to the electric car--“the people’s carriage.” The fishermen, as the captain said, had captured it; they stood with bowed heads, as the stretcher passed through them, like children, sobbing. Throngs of them followed the slowly moving car, which carried Bayard tenderly to his own door. It was said afterwards that scores of them watched all night outside the cottage, peering for some sign of how it fared with him; but they were so still that one might hardly tell their figures from the shadows of the night.

The wind had continued to rise, but the thunder had passed on, and the shower was almost over when Bayard’s bearers lifted him across the threshold of Mrs. Granite’s door. At that moment one belated flash ran over earth and sea and sky. It was a red flash, and a mighty one. By its crimson light the fishermen saw his face for that last instant; it lay turned over on the stretcher quietly, towards his wife. The red color dyed her bridal white, and the terrible composure of her attitude was revealed; her hand was fast in his; she seemed to communicate, God knew how, with the unconscious man.

The flash went out, and darkness fell again.

“Then God shut the door,” muttered an old and religious fisherman who stood weeping by the fence, among the larkspurs.

* * * * *

The wind went down, and the tide went out. Bayard’s pulse and breath fell with the sea, and the June dawn came. The tide came in, and the wind arose, and it was evening. Then he moaned, and turned, and it was made out that he tried to say, “Helen?--was Helen hurt?” Then the soul came into his eyes, and they saw her.

* * * * *

He did not sink away that day, nor the next, and the evening and the morning were the third day in the chamber where death and life made duel for him.

He suffered, it is hard to think how much; but the fine courage in his habit of living clung on. The injury was not, necessarily, a fatal one. The great consulting surgeon called from Boston said. “The patient may live.” He added: “But the vitality is low; it has been sapped to the roots. And the lung is weak. There has been a strain sometime; the organ has received a lesion.”

Then Job Slip, when he heard this, thought of the minister’s cough, which dated from that battle with the surf off Ragged Rock. And the value of his own cheap life, bought at a price so precious, overwhelmed the man. He would have died a hundred deaths for the pastor. Instead, he had to do the harder thing. It was asked of him to live, and to remember.

In all those days (they were eight in number) Jane Granite’s small, soft eyes took on a strange expression; it was not unlike that we see in a dog who is admitted to the presence of a sick or injured master. God was merciful to Jane. The pastor had come back. To live or to die, he had come. It was hers again to work, to watch, to run, to slave for him; she looked at the new wife without a pang of envy; she came or went under Helen’s orders; she poured out her heart in that last torrent of self-forgetful service, and thanked God for the precious chance, and asked no more. She had the spaniel suffering, but she had the spaniel happiness.

* * * * *

For seven days and nights he lay in his shabby rooms, a royal sufferer. The Christ above his bed looked down with solemn tenderness; in his moments of consciousness (but these were few) he glanced at the picture.

Helen had not left his room, either day or night. Leaning upon one arm on the edge of the narrow bed, she watched for the lifting of an eyelid, for the motion of a hand, for the ebbing or the rising of a breath. Sometimes he knew her, and seemed to try to say to her how comforting it was to him to have her there, in the dreary old rooms, where he had dreamed of her sumptuous presence; where they meant to begin their life and love together.

But he could not talk. She found herself already anticipating the habit of those whom the eternal silence bereaves, recalling every precious phrase that his lips had uttered in those last days; she repeated to herself the words which he had said to her on Sunday morning,--

“Nothing _can_ harm us now, for you are mine, and I am yours, and this is forever.”

As the seventh day broke he grew perceptibly stronger. Helen yielded to her father’s entreaties, and for a moment absented herself from the sick-room--for she was greatly overworn,--to drink a breath of morning air. She sat down on the step in the front door of the cottage. She noticed the larkspur in the garden, blue and tall; bees were humming through it; the sound of the tide came up loudly; Jane Granite came and offered her something, she could not have said what; Helen tried to drink it, but pushed the cup away, and went hurriedly upstairs again.

A cot had now been moved in for her beside Bayard’s narrow bed. She sat down on the edge of it, between her father and her husband. The Professor stirred to step softly out.

“Dear Professor!” said Bayard suddenly. He looked at the Christ on the wall, and smiled. “We meant--the same thing--after all,” he whispered.

Then he put his hand in his wife’s, and slept.

It came on to be the evening of the eighth day. He had grown stronger all the day, but he suffered much.

“Folks are keepin’ of him back by their prayers,” said the religious, old fisherman, who leaned every day upon the garden fence. “He can’t pass.”

But Job Slip and Captain Hap, who sat upon the doorsteps, listening from dawn to dark for any sign from Bayard’s room, said nothing at all.

It came to be evening, and the tide had risen with the wind. The sea called all night long. Helen sat alone with her husband.

He did not wander that night, but watched her face whenever he was not asleep.

“Kiss me, Helen,” he sighed at midnight.