Part 10

"You see--it's this way. Three years back now--Armstrong was a minor, anyway, and not responsible for the money if he chose to put it that way. But he put a bet on Belle Noir--a pretty big bet--we fellows sort o' goaded him to it,--and he lost. Plumb five hundred dollars he lost, sir! And if you'll believe me, he wrote a letter to Keats--Keats backed Charlie Boy--saying he had no mind to ask his governor for the money, that betting was against his conscience, anyway, but that, as his honor demanded that he pay up, he earnestly requested for time to do it in. Well, Keats said he'd give him time. He was going abroad and he'd give him till he came back. Now, sir, that was three years ago, and Armstrong's never given a sign. I met Keats in New York last week, and he said he meant to come down here and see Armstrong. He says he hates a sneak. That's what I meant to tell Armstrong to-night; that Keats is coming here. You see, nobody knows a word about it but us three. By the bye, I guess you'd better not mention it. I don't want to make trouble."

"You certainly have astounded me, sir," affirmed Peter Weaver. "Mr. Armstrong's the very last person I'd have suspected of ever getting into such a box as this. And five hundred dollars, too. That's a mighty big lot of money to throw away."

"If he's saving up his salary to pay it it'll take him rather awhile to get it together," grinned Beesly. "What does he get for preaching?"

"We pay our preacher two hundred and fifty dollars a year, sir. And perquisites," he added, as the drummer gave a significant whistle. "There are perquisites--there'd be more if he got married"--

"Perhaps he will before long. There are pretty gals down here. Cousin Amanda's girl is a thundering beauty. I shouldn't wonder if Armstrong had got his eyes set that way. Little mite strait-laced, though, is Nellie. By George, what'd she say if she knew the preacher used to bet on horses? Reformed, didn't he?"

"Mr. Armstrong's said to have experienced sanctification," said Peter, slowly.

"Oh, come, now, that's too good," shouted the commercial traveler.

"There may be such a thing; I'm called skeptical myself. But whether there is or not, there's goodness. And for my part, I believe Mr. Armstrong's an upright, moral, well-meaning man, and it's the duty of his friends to stand by him," said Peter Weaver. But deep down in his heart was a cry. The preacher was, then, in love with Nellie: did Nellie love the preacher?

VI.

THE hardest thing in the world to bear is self-contempt. The man or woman who has once slipped from his own standard of rectitude--whatever it is--has henceforth in his soul a little Inferno where desperate desire is continually carrying a huge stone up a hill and memory is as continually rolling it down again.

Armstrong's thoughts shaped themselves into some such words as these as he galloped out from Benvenew. He was not running from Beesly through any cowardly impulse; but because he wanted to think the matter all out, alone. The moment he had laid eyes on the fellow he knew that the thing he had been fighting down so long, overlaying by a structure of self-denial and good deeds, had come uppermost in the foreground of his life, and must be faced as a sin freshly committed, because to the present hour concealed. The young man had a strong nature, proud and tender; a little one-sided in its development, and the more likely to cut out intense suffering for itself through the aid of imagination. When conscience lashed he had no instinct to shrink away and make excuse; instead, he cried "Peccavi!" feeling that he deserved the more because no one but himself knew that he deserved it. Herein, although circumstances may have made it appear that he was nearly, if not quite, a hypocrite, Miles Armstrong proved himself none, for he felt that the worst of a sin was in its commission, not in the fact of its being made public. It would have been a relief to him all along if that gambling experience in his past, when, for a brief space he had sowed wild oats, could have been known to all the world; then he might have shouldered blame, lived the matter down, and started afresh, with a clear page for the future. But expediency had been his counselor. She had whispered that his usefulness would be impaired if he let himself appear as a common youth; a preacher should be in a certain sense, immaculate; his faults and follies were between himself and his conscience. What he _had_ been was not the world's business; only what he was _now_.

And so Armstrong had concealed his fault and gone on trying to forget it, but never able to do so, until, between looking on the picture of what he was believed to be, and what he was in his own knowledge of himself, the great contrast took the form of an accusation that made him out--liar: of all things the meanest and most despicable when the lie is one which assumes the appearance of a virtue that a man has not.

To the sky the young preacher turned his face, worn in a few hours to the sharp outlines of pain, and in the dusk and loneliness of that mountain path, over which Stella was swiftly bearing him home, he made a vow in his heart that from this hour he would cease to be the slave of the Lie. He would descend, before the eyes of men and women, into the valley of humiliation, that he might emerge a free soul, even if he must in consequence go on with his life stripped of all that made it pleasant and useful.

And then Miles, lifting his hat as if bidding farewell to something beloved, rode calmly on to Roselawn.

Again, the little church beside Sneaking Creek was crowded as upon the Sunday the young preacher had given his first sermon. Some indefinite rumor had got abroad of a surprise in store for the congregation; how started it would be difficult to say, and nobody had the slightest idea of what he expected; only there was an atmosphere of expectancy.

All the Armstrong family were at church, the Judge resplendent with a purple necktie, and his wife in a purple silk; the girls, as usual, attired with taste and at considerable expense. Mistress Amanda and her mother were in their pew, with Nellie between them, charming as the spirit of October, in a carefully turned claret-colored poplin and a toque trimmed with autumn leaves. And Peter Weaver was there; with a dubious expression, and very sore in mind; wishing to believe the best of people under adverse circumstances, and nobly ready to put himself out of the question if he must do so to make little Nellie happy.

There was a peculiar stillness as Armstrong arose after the hymn that heralded the sermon. The young man's pale, tense look produced a general sensation of anxiety. Some good mothers in Israel were for handing him up their smelling salts. Girls scrutinized his features with their mouths falling apart, wondering what dreadful thing had happened to him to make his lips so set and his eyes so deep and black. But all turned their faces toward him with the sure response of sympathy toward unaffected feeling.

"My people!"----

The words were those of an old minister, grown gray in service among loved friends; but they came earnest and unstudied from the heart of the young preacher. Hearts thrilled to him, answering the strangely sweet appeal that breathed through the notes of that fine voice, always beautiful in its modulations, but to-day with a new quality that won without his hearers knowing why.

"You have come for a sermon," Armstrong went on. "I have no sermon to give you. When you elected me to serve as the minister of this church I had joy in taking the place you gave me. I love the work. At this instant, when I am about to give it up, every fibre of my nature clings to it, my heart and my mind as well. Yet I must give it up. I am not worthy to be your minister; nor _now_, to be a minister at all. And the reason is this. Some time ago, before I was ordained, I was for a season given over to ungodliness. I fell into one sin that by heaven's grace did not lead to worse, as it might have done. It was not a thing most of you would call very bad"--the proud Armstrong blood made the speaker's head rear slightly. He felt his father's angry eyes upon him and even imagined he heard the word "fool"; but he sternly went on:

"We southerners are too apt to look with indulgence upon social sins. Horse-racing and gambling are things you might consider excusable in a young man, even in one meaning to be a minister. These were my failings. I don't exaggerate them so much as to say that because I did these things I am unfit to serve as your minister. No; it is not that."

A deep breath labored through his lungs, and the many staring eyes in front of him all seemed to swim together and take on the form of a question. What was it, then? What was to come?

"The first duty of any soul is to be thoroughly honest," continued the young preacher. "He who glosses over his own faults and acts as if he had a guiltless past behind him helps to spread the fell disease of deceit and hypocrisy; the great pest of our times. And of this baseness I have been guilty. I let it be supposed that I had experienced sanctification. I came before you unconfessed and with a semblance of uprightness it was not my privilege to claim. All men are sinners, and it is the nature of some not to feel their sins acutely; they can go about with light hearts, never aware of the yoke a Christian should bear. But others are different. Every man according to his nature. We can only be guided by the light within. But wo to that man who wilfully shuts his eyes to the revelation of his own conscience! St. Paul felt the weight of his sins upon his soul and bravely cried out, 'I am the chief of sinners!' He made the world see him just as he was, not pretending goodness that did not belong to him. This is the right thing to do; above all, the right and only thing for a teacher of men to do. I have always felt this, and have acted contrary to my convictions. I have lived a lie before you. Now, for the first time you see me as I am and know that I am not what you thought me. It is the just punishment of one who 'knows the right and chooses the wrong,' to lose all he has sought to gain. I lose what I value most in giving up my privilege of usefulness among you. But it is my duty to do this, and I dare not shrink from it because it is hard."

Soldiers know that valor is born in the heat of strife, called out by the sight of waving banners, the note of bugles, and the feeling of a great mass rushing all together against a foe. A far greater effort of courage is made by the man who deliberately stands up before his friends and makes a confession that may in an instant turn their esteem to contempt, and leave him alone and defenseless among a host of accusers. In making his supreme effort Armstrong had not been blind to this probable result. His imagination had vividly pictured the moment of his humiliation. Nerved to carry the thing through, his voice uttered the final word without a falter. Then, stepping back, he sat down.

Every sort of confusion prevailed. The general feeling was that of excitement and astonishment, especially among the younger set. Very few were able to appreciate the strange manifestation of moral greatness that had been made before them; and with these the uppermost sensation was that of awkwardness. Bluff old farmers had grown red and uneasy, aware that their young preacher had climbed to a height where they could not approach him. They shuffled their feet and looked down. The women whispered; some tittered hysterically. One got up and crossed the church to say something to a friend. It was the signal for a general movement, and in a few moments nearly everybody had changed their places. Armstrong, with his fingers over his closed eyes, saw nothing, but he felt terrible vibrations in his brain. He was alone; deserted. In a single moment of suffering years can be compressed, and a sensitive nature grows old fast.

There was a light touch upon his arm, a touch that thrilled him through and through. He looked, and standing beside him was beautiful Nellie; shy, shrinking Nellie, always dreading any conspicuous position, and wont to hide behind her mother's ample shadow. She was upon the platform, holding out her small, ungloved hand, her eyes shining through tears, her cheeks flushed rosy red; forgetful of shyness, all thought of self lost in the outburst of sympathy and reverence that had led her feet straight to him her heart called lover, leader and highest among men.

The young preacher's sunken eyes gleamed with a new, wonderful hope. They devoured the sweet face. Her hand was caught and held, pressed hard while he whispered, "Nellie, love!" and then, mindful of the staring people, Armstrong would have swept her quickly back, but the young girl felt to her very finger-tips the sense of that great stare. Her head dropped, her form trembled, the roses in her cheeks turned to fire, and shrinking, faltering, on the verge of a burst of weeping, she turned and hid her face on the young preacher's breast!

Scarcely a second was given to the people to take this sight in before Peter Weaver's huge form towered on the platform in front of the young pair. He had hastened, almost leaped up the steps, and behind him Nellie fled to the little door at the side of the platform and so out from the church. One great throb of pain had Peter's heart given at sight of Nellie on Armstrong's breast, one strong, silent effort of renunciation of a lifetime's hopes he made, and then self was put behind him, for good and all. He had a duty to perform, and he did it with his might.

"I want to say a word or two!" his great voice sang out, silencing the clamor and confusion in another thrill of curiosity.

"I ain't a speaker, as you all know----"

A comment from the rear chimed in, "You're a poet!" It was Penny Haywood, and Violet Armstrong, hanging upon his arm, quickly forced him to be silent.

"But there air facts in nature that speak for themselves, and don't require eloquent speech-making to get people to understand 'em. One of these facts is a good man. There are lots of good women--God bless 'em!--and some pretty good men in an all 'round way. But the rarest thing on all of God's earth is a thoroughly good, honest man; one whose acts air as transparent as daylight, that stands up before his fellows clean and sound, and dares to father everything he has ever done in his life, without shamming or palliating anything. You know it was this kind of an honest man that old Diogenes went 'round seeking with a lantern and couldn't find. Well, if he'd come seeking him in Fauquier County, Virginia, he'd have found him right here in the Second Baptist church, and his name's Miles Armstrong!"

"Good!" pronounced a woman's voice; Miss Lavinia Powell, not afraid to speak her mind, and esteeming it a rare privilege to assent to a man's common-sense.

"I consider, ladies and gentlemen, that we've had here before us to-day an exhibition of high and fine moral feeling that ought to be a lesson to us all our lives. And as for the modesty of the man that's given it, and his idea of being unworthy to go on preaching to us and all that, why, I say--I say that there ain't another as worthy one to be found anywhere, and if you're of my mind, we'll go right on having Mr. Miles Armstrong preach to us as long as he lives! And what's more," shouted Peter, while he unnecessarily reared himself a-tip-toe, "I'm darned if I think it'll hurt the church a bit if, to crown this occasion, you all join in a cheer of good-will to our preacher, Mr. Miles Armstrong and Miss Nellie Thomas, his wife--that's-to-be!"

Then there was laughing and acclamation, and crowding toward the platform, and the young preacher's hand was seized and wrung until his fingers ached, and his bewildered brain ceased to think at all, but left him altogether at the mercy of his friends, who nearly tore him to pieces in their zeal.

Peter Weaver for once asserted himself and claimed the privilege of driving the young preacher to Benvenew--where he was panting to go after Nellie--in his own high top buggy. He had something to say in private.

"It's this," said Peter, laying his broad hand earnestly on the young man's knee, when they were well along on the road and no one was near. "I knew about the thing you've been taking so hard, before you told of it to-day. Beesly told me. Now, my dear sir, you want money. You don't want to ask your father for it. No need. You've done enough. Let me help you out o' this leetle scrape. I've more money than I know what to do with. I've got five hundred dollars right here, in this little roll, and I want you to take it. Not as a loan; as a gift. Do, now!"

Armstrong protested, thanked him with no lack of warmest gratitude, but absolutely refused. His father was rich, he said, and would help him. His road was easy before him now, easier than he deserved. All Peter could think of to console himself was that he would buy Nellie a wedding present with the money.

Shame-faced little Nellie, hiding behind the parlor curtains, longing for Armstrong, and fearing to have him come! How quickly he found her and carried her triumphantly to that distant corner where a great black horse-hair sofa swallowed them up; the worn horse-hair so slippery that he had to put his arm around her to hold her on.

Mistress Amanda was a dumfounded woman. So swiftly and suddenly had come the surprises of that morning that all she could do was to contemplate her daughter from a distance, and say "Well!" in a tone that meant resignation to circumstances.

But she had had her proud moment. Her heart--warm and true yet after bitter life-experiences--had leaped with delight when Peter Weaver made the little speech that with her knowledge of him, showed him a hero, capable of the most generous sacrifice it is within the power of a man to make. "Hero," she called him, to honest Peter's immense confusion, as they sat sedately in two armchairs before the fire, with their backs to the young couple in the far corner of the spacious room; talking over the details of the great occurrence.

"For such a sensible woman you air given to making too much of the little things men do that air right to do," said Peter, smiling.

"So few men do the little things that are right," sighed Mistress Amanda, looking at her own past in the bed of fire. "You are the only man I know, Peter, that I would put a heavy stake on to take the straight course every time."

"What, leave out Armstrong?" remonstrated Peter, with a jerk of his head backward toward the corner.

"Armstrong has come upon me too suddenly," complained Mistress Amanda. Then, with the generosity of a candid nature she paid rightful tribute to what commanded her admiration.

"He is certainly an excellent young man," she said. "A noble fellow. I've thought of him more than once as you spoke of him in that speech of yours,--'the man Diogenes sought!' I trust he will make my little Nellie happy."

"She has that within her that ensures happiness," said Peter steadily. "The sweetest, soundest heart ever a woman had. Heaven bless her!"

Mistress Amanda softly stretched out her firm, shapely hand, and laid it on his own as it rested on the arm of the chair. It was a friendly, sympathetic touch. Perhaps unawares, something more went into it than she intended.

Peter looked at her with great kindness.

"You and me air getting to be middle-aged people, Amanda," he said. "The chief thing now is for us to make the young people happy."

But old lady Powell, apparently dozing in her chair on the opposite side of the fire was building a double air-castle. She said to herself that Peter's little green cottage would suit the young preacher and his bride very well, if its master should come to Benvenew to live. Nothing was more likely. And Amanda and Peter would just hit it off together. Everybody could see that. It was perfectly plain.

A HALT AT DAWN[3]

MARGARET DANVERS stepped aboard the southern-bound sleeper at Chicago one stormy March evening, and as she walked composedly to her berth in the middle of the car, the eyes of every person present were riveted upon her. She wore a closely fitting garment of Russian sable, which enveloped her completely, and a large beaver hat with drooping plumes, and from the single fine diamond flashing at her throat to the tips of her dainty Suéde boots she looked the model of a fashionable beauty. She was the only woman on the car, and before she had fairly settled herself comfortably, all the men had mentally pronounced their opinion of her looks and style, and hazarded a conjecture as to her age. Her attendant, a florid man of middle age, received the slight degree of attention justified by his seeming only an adjunct of the moment. As he left her, he put into her hands a bunch of costly roses, which she received with a smile and laid upon the opposite seat the instant he was gone.

Of the score of passengers, two or three knew her by sight, for she was, in a way, a public character, but, as it happened, none were really acquainted with her, and before long even those most deeply interested in her appearance yielded to the apathy peculiar to sleeping-cars, and subsided into their newspapers or their rugs, preparing to wear out the evening until bedtime.

Margaret amused herself in watching the flying snow and in reverie. Too used to traveling to even care to look about her, she yielded to the prevailing somnambulistic influence just enough to dream without sleeping. At first there was in her mind a confusion of events past, present, and to come. Incidents of no importance mingled with greater ones, and her reflections became mixed with little fanciful suggestions of things long since forgotten, or, rather, voluntarily put out of mind. She tried to think of her career, to recall her triumphs, and to dwell upon the possibilities of the future. She told herself that music was her life, that all she had to do with was the beautiful and the divine in art, and that the everyday existence she had struggled to rise above was henceforth nothing more than an unpleasant memory.

At twenty-eight she was her own mistress, earning an independent income through the use of her beautiful voice. The teaching days and the drudgery of the class-room had passed, and as a concert singer she was favorably known in more than one western city noted for its critical taste. After a successful winter in Milwaukee and Chicago, she was now upon her way to fulfil an engagement in Baltimore, which promised more than anything in which she had yet engaged. She was in the heyday of her powers, admired, in radiant health, conscious of her beauty and talent, and entirely satisfied with life. What did it mean that, as she looked from the window with a proud smile upon her lips, some tantalizing thoughts should intrude themselves, and the mind so entirely self-poised should feel, for the first time in years, the weakening influence of some emotional fancies? It was her boast that she was never lonely, never sad, that her whole heart was in the work.

The conductor passed through taking tickets, and brought her back to the present. And after this came the little stir of the porter making up the berths, and she moved to the end of the car. In front two men were talking.

"Never saw a promise of a worse storm," said one. "Shouldn't wonder if the tracks were blocked a little ahead."

"Comes from the southwest," suggested the other. "If necessary, they'll put on another locomotive. We're bound to get through at any rate on this train; that's one comfort."