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 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 
 
 ; What is that to thee ? Follow thou me. 
 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 @fyt fitoersibe prpg?, CambriDoe 
 
 1897 
 
 BRARY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 TV A "V/TC 
 
Copyright, 1894, 
 BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 THIRTY-NINTH THOUSAND. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company 
 
He hath given a loat to the shipwrecked. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 THEEE were seven of them at the table that day, 
 and they were talking about heredity. At least 
 they were talking about whatever stood for hered- 
 ity at the date of our history. The word had 
 penetrated to religious circles at the time ; but it 
 was still interpreted with a free personal transla- 
 tion. 
 
 Perhaps there is no greater curiosity of its 
 kind than that of a group of theological students 
 (chiefly in their junior year) discussing science. 
 It is not certain that the tendencies of the Semi- 
 nary club dinner are not in themselves materialistic. 
 The great law of denial belongs to the powerful 
 forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish 
 baked beans, or an unrequited affection. That 
 the thing we have not is the thing we would have, 
 neither you nor I nor the junior may deny ; and it 
 is quite probable that these young men set an un- 
 due value upon a game dinner and entrees, which 
 was not without its reactionary effect upon their 
 philosophy. 
 
 Jaynes, for instance, had been reading Huxley. 
 Jaynes was a stout man, and short, with those 
 
2 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 round eyeglasses by which oculists delight in de- 
 forming round people. He confessed that he was 
 impressed by the argument. He said : 
 
 " Varieties arise, we do not know why ; and if it 
 should be probable that the majority of varieties 
 have arisen in a spontaneous manner " 
 
 " A little vinegar, Jaynes, if you please," inter- 
 rupted Tompkinton gently. Tompkinton was long 
 and lean. His hair was thin, and scraggled about 
 his ears, which were not small. His hands were 
 thin. His clear blue eye had an absent look. In 
 cold weather he wore an old army cape of his 
 father's. He studied much without a fire, for the 
 club board at the " short price " cost him two 
 dollars and seventy-five cents a week. His boots 
 were old, and he had no gloves and a cough. He 
 came from the State of New Hampshire. 
 
 Then there was Fenton : a snug little fellow, 
 who took honors at Amherst ; a man who never 
 spent more than five hundred a year in his life, 
 yet always wore clean linen and a tolerable coat, 
 had a stylish cut to his hair, and went to Boston 
 occasionally to a concert. It was even reported 
 that he had been to see Booth. But the Faculty 
 discredited the report. Besides, he had what was 
 known as " a gift at prayer." 
 
 Fenton was rather a popular man, and when he 
 spoke in answer to Holt (who observed that lie 
 considered Huxley's Descent of Man an infidel 
 book) he was listened to with marked attention. 
 
 Holt was in the Special Course. He was a con 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 3 
 
 verted brakeman from the Hecla and St. Mary's, 
 a flourishing Western railway. Holt, being the 
 only student present who had not received any un- 
 due measure of collegiate culture, was treated with 
 marked courtesy by his more liberally educated 
 fellow-students. 
 
 " We are reading Darwin up at my room, two 
 or three of us, after dinner," observed Fenton 
 kindly. " We should be happy to have you join 
 us sometimes, Holt." . 
 
 Holt blinked at the speaker with that uncertain 
 motion of the eyelids which means half intellectual 
 confusion, and half personal embarrassment. Not 
 a man of these young Christians had smiled ; yet 
 the Special Course student, being no natural fool, 
 vaguely perceived that something had gone wrong. 
 
 But Fenton was vivaciously discussing last No- 
 vember's ball games with his vis-a-vis, a middler 
 whose name is unknown to history. It was some 
 time before he said, looking far down the long 
 table : 
 
 " Bayard, who is it that says it takes three gen- 
 erations to make a gentleman ? " 
 
 " Why, Holmes, I suppose," answered he who was 
 addressed. " Who else would be likely to say it ? " 
 
 "Any of the Avonsons might have said it,'' ob* 
 served a gentlemanly fellow from the extreme end 
 of the table ; he returned his spoon to his saucer 
 as he spoke. There were several students at the 
 club who did not drink with their spoons in their 
 teacups, and even laid the knife and fork in paral- 
 
4 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 lels upon the plate, and this was one of the men. 
 He had an effective and tenderly cherished mus- 
 tache. He was, on the whole, a handsome man. 
 It was thought that he would settle over a city 
 parish. 
 
 " I doubt if there was ever an Avonson who 
 could have said it, Bent," replied Bayard. The 
 A von sons were a prominent New England family, 
 not unknown to diplomacy and letters, nor even to 
 Holt of the Hecla and St. Mary's. 
 
 " But why, then ? " persisted Bent. 
 
 " They have believed it too thoroughly and too 
 long to say anything so fine." 
 
 Bent raised an interrogative eyebrow. 
 
 " You won't understand," returned Bayard, smil- 
 ing. All the fellows turned towards Bayard when 
 he smiled ; it was a habit they had. " You are n't 
 expected to. You are destined for the Episcopal 
 Church." 
 
 " I see the connection less than ever," Bent 
 maintained. " But I scent heresy somewhere. 
 You are doomed to the stake, Bayard. That is 
 clear as as the Latin fathers. Have an apple, 
 do. It 's sour, but sound. It 's Baldwin year, 
 or we should n't get them except Sundays." 
 
 Bayard mechanically took the apple, and laid it 
 down untouched. His eye wandered up the cold 
 length of the long table decorated with stone 
 china. Somehow, few aspects of the theological 
 life struck his imagination so typically as a big 
 vegetable dish piled with cold, unrelieved Bald- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 5 
 
 wins, to be served for after-dinner fruit on a win- 
 ter day. In the kind of mental chill which the 
 smallest of causes may throw over a nature like 
 his, Bayard did not exert himself to reply to his 
 classmate, but fell into one of the sudden silences 
 for which he was marked. 
 
 " My father," observed the New Hampshire man 
 quietly, " was a farmer. He dug his own potatoes 
 the day before he enlisted. Perhaps I am no 
 judge, but I always thought he was a gentleman 
 when I was a little boy." 
 
 Tompkinton shouldered himself out of the con- 
 versation, asked one of the fellows what hour the 
 Professor had decided on for eternal punishment, 
 and went out into the wintry air, taking long 
 strides to the lecture-room, with his notebook 
 under the old blue army cape, of which the north- 
 west wind flung up the scarlet side. 
 
 " Has the Professor tea'd you yet, Bent? " asked 
 Bayard, rousing, perhaps a little too obviously 
 anxious to turn the channels of conversation. Gen- 
 ealogical problems at best, and in picked company, 
 are unsafe topics ; hence peculiarly dangerous at a 
 club table of poor theologues, half of whom must, 
 in the nature of things, be forcing their way into 
 social conditions wholly unknown to their past. 
 Bayard was quicker than the other men to think 
 of such things. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Bent, with a slightly twitching 
 mustache. " Ten of us at a time in alphabetical 
 order. I came the first night, being a B. Madam 
 
6 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 his wife and Mademoiselle his daughter were pres- 
 ent, the only ladies against such a lot of us. I 
 pitied them. . But Miss Carruth seemed to pity 
 us. She showed me her photograph book, and 
 some Swiss pickle forks carved. Then she 
 asked me if I read Comte. And then her mother 
 askejd me how many of the class had received 
 calls. Then the Professor told some stories about 
 a Baptist minister. And so by and by we came 
 away. It was an abandoned hour for Cesarea. 
 It was ten o'clock." 
 
 " I was in town that night," observed Bayard. 
 " I had to send my regrets." 
 
 " If you were in town, why could n't you go ? " 
 asked the middler. 
 
 " I mean that I was out of town. I was in Bos- 
 ton. I had gone home," explained Bayard pleas- 
 antly. 
 
 "You won't come in now till after the Z's," 
 suggested Fenton quickly ; " or else you '11 be left 
 over till the postgraduates take turn, and the B's 
 come on again." 
 
 The Baldwin apples were all eaten now, and the 
 stone china was disappearing from the long table 
 in detachments. Jaynes and the Special Course 
 man had followed Tompkinton, and the middler 
 and Bent now pushed back their chairs. Bayard 
 remained a moment to ask after the landlady's 
 neuralgia, he was one of the men who do not 
 economize sympathy without more effort than its 
 repression is usually worth, and Fenton waited 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 1 
 
 for him in the cold hall. The two young men 
 shoved their shoulders into their overcoats stur- 
 dily, and walked across the Seminary green to- 
 gether to their rooms. 
 
 Strictly speaking, one should say the Seminary 
 5< white." It was midwinter, and on top of Cesarea 
 Hill. From the four corners of the earth the 
 winds of heaven blew, and beat against that spot ; 
 to it the first snowflake flew, and on it the last 
 blizzard fell. Were the winters longer and the 
 summers hotter in Cesarea than in other places ? 
 So thought the theologues in the old draughty, 
 shaking Seminary dormitories dignified by time 
 and native talent with the name of " halls." 
 
 Young Bayard trod the icy path to his own par- 
 ticular hall (Galilee was its name) with the chronic 
 homesickness of a city-bred man forced through a 
 New England country winter under circumstances 
 which forbade him to find fault with it. His pro- 
 fession and his seminary were his own choice ; he 
 had never been conscious of wavering in it, or 
 caught in grumbling about it, but sometimes he 
 felt that if he had been brought up differently, 
 like Tompkinton, for instance, not to say Holt, 
 he should have expended less of that vitality neces- 
 sary to any kind of success in the simple process 
 of enduring the unfamiliar. 
 
 " How was the gale round your room last 
 night?" inquired young Fenton, as the two 
 climbed the frozen terraces, and leaped over the 
 chains that hung between rows of stunted posts set 
 
8 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 at regular intervals in front of the Seminary build' 
 ings. For what purpose these stone dwarfs stag- 
 gered there, no one but the founders of the institu- 
 tion knew ; and they had been in their graves too 
 long to tell. 
 
 " It made me think of my uncle's house," ob= 
 served Bayard. 
 
 " By force of contrast ? Yes. I never lived in 
 Beacon Street. But I can guess. I pity you in 
 that northwest corner. My mother sent me a soap- 
 stone by express last week. I should have been 
 dead, I should have been frozen stark, without it. 
 You heat it, you know, on top of the base-burner, 
 and tuck it in the sheets. Then you forget and 
 kick it out when you 're asleep, and it thumps on 
 the fellow's head in the room below, and he black- 
 guards you for it through the ceiling. Better get 
 one." 
 
 "Are you really comfortable all night?" 
 asked Bayard wistfully. " I have n't thought 
 about being warm or any of those luxuries since I 
 came here. I expected to rough it. I mean to 
 toughen myself." 
 
 In his heart he was repeating certain old words 
 which ran like this : Endure hardness, as a good 
 soldier of Jesus Christ. But they did not come to 
 Ms lips. He was as afraid of cant as too many 
 young theologues are of sincere simplicity. 
 
 " Oh, come, Bayard ! " urged the other. There 's 
 where you miss it. Why not be comfortable ? 1 
 don't see that Christianity and misery need be 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 9 
 
 identical. You are certain to have a tough time if 
 you go on as you begin. Talk about election, fore- 
 ordination, predestination ! You take the whole 
 set of condemnatory doctrines into your hands and 
 settle your own fate beforehand. A man does n't 
 leave Providence any free will who sets out in life 
 as you do," 
 
 " Do I strike you that way ? " asked the young 
 man anxiously. " If there is anything I abhor, it 
 is a gloomy clergyman ! " 
 
 " There you are again ! Now I 'm not finding 
 fault with you," began Fenton, settling his chin in 
 his comfortable way. "Your soul is all nerves, 
 man. It is a ganglion. You need more tissue 
 round it like me." 
 
 The two young men stood at the foot of the bare, 
 wooden stairs in the cold entry of Galilee Hall, at 
 the dividing of their ways. It was the usual luck 
 of the other that he should have a southwest room, 
 first floor. But Bayard climbed to his northwest 
 third-story corner uncomplainingly. It occurred to 
 him to say that there were objects in life as im- 
 portant, on the whole, as being comfortable. But 
 he did not. He only asked if the lectures on the 
 Nicene Creed were to be continued at four, and 
 went on, shivering, to his room. 
 
 It was a bitter February afternoon, and the wind 
 blew the wrong way for northwest corners. Bay- 
 ard had spent the day in coddling his big base* 
 burner, which now rewarded him by a decent glow 
 as he entered his study. He had no chum, and 
 
10 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 thanked God for it ; he curled into the shell of his 
 solitude contentedly, and turned to his books at 
 once, plunging headlong into the gulf of the Nicene 
 Creed. At the end of two hours he got up, shiver- 
 ing. The subject was colder than the climate, and 
 he felt congealed to the soul. He flung open his 
 bedroom door. An icy breath* came from that 
 monastic cell. He thought, " I really must get 
 some double windows." He had purposely re- 
 frained all winter from this luxury lest he should 
 seem to have more comforts than his poorer class- 
 mates. 
 
 The early winter sunset was coming on, and 
 Cesarea Hill was wrapping herself in gold and 
 purple and in silver sheen to meet it. Bayard 
 went to his window, and stood, with his hands 
 locked behind him, looking abroad. 
 
 The Seminary lawns (old Cesareans spoke of 
 them as the Seminary "yard"), encrusted in two 
 feet of snow, took on the evening colors in great 
 sweeps, as if made by one or two strokes of a 
 mighty brush. The transverse paths that cut 
 across the snow, under rows of ancient elm-trees, 
 had the shape of a cross. The delicate, bare 
 branches of the elms were etched against a blazing 
 west. Above, the metallic sky hung cold and 
 clear. A few students were crossing the lawns, 
 tripping and slipping on the paths of gray and 
 glittering ice. In the wide street beyond, a num- 
 ber of people were breasting the blast, valiantly 
 prepared for a mile's walk to the evening mail, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 11 
 
 The night threatened to be very cold. Across 
 the street, the Professors' houses stood in a seri- 
 ous row Beyond them, the horizon line ran to Wa- 
 chusett, undisturbed ; and the hill and valley 
 view melted into noble outlines under snow and 
 sun. 
 
 Emanuel Bayard stood a,t his window looking 
 across to the hills. The setting sun shone full in 
 his face. I see no reason why one should hesitate 
 to give a man full credit for personal beauty be- 
 cause one chances to be his biographer, and do not 
 hesitate to say that the attractiveness of this young 
 man was extraordinary. 
 
 He was of slender build, but tall, and with 
 good square shoulders that sturdily supported his 
 head. He had the forehead of a student, the 
 carriage of a man of society, and the beauty of a 
 myth, or a saint, which may be the same thing. 
 His complexion was a trifle fair for a man ; his 
 brown hair, shot with gold, curled defiantly all 
 over his head ; when he first decided to study 
 theology, he used to try to brush it straight, but 
 he might as well have tried to brush Antinous 
 out of fable. He had bright, human, healthy 
 color, and, as has been intimated, a remarkable 
 smile. His lips were delicately cut ; they curved 
 and trembled with almost pitiful responsiveness 
 to impressions. Thought and feeling chased over 
 his face like the tints of a vibrating prism cast 
 on a white surface. It was in his eyes that the 
 extreme sensitiveness of his nature seemed to con- 
 
12 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 centrate and strengthen into repose. His nearest 
 friend might have said of Bayard's eyes, They 
 are hazel, and said no more. Some stranger in 
 the street, to whom the perception of the unusual 
 was given, might have passed him, and said, That 
 man's eyes are living light. Indeed, strangers 
 often moved back and looked again at him ; while 
 people who knew him best sometimes turned away 
 from him uncomfortably, as if he blinded them. 
 This power to dazzle, which we often see in merely 
 clear-minded persons with a well-painted iris, may 
 not be associated in the least with the higher 
 nature, but even the contrary. It was the pecu- 
 liarity about Bayard that his eye seemed to be 
 the highest as well as the brightest fact in any 
 given personal situation. Neither a prophet nor 
 a cut-throat would for an instant have questioned 
 the spiritual supremacy of the man. 
 
 In Paris, once, he was thrown in the way of a 
 celebrated adventuress, and she confessed to him, 
 sobbing, as if he had been her priest, within an 
 hour. Rank is of the soul, and Bayard's was 
 unmistakable. Beauty like his is as candid, in 
 its way, as certain forms of vice. It is impossi- 
 ble for him to conceal his descent who is born a 
 spiritual prince. 
 
 But the young man was thinking nothing of 
 this as he faced the cold and gleaming sky, to 
 see the sun drop just to the north of Wachusett, 
 as he had done so many winter nights since he 
 took possession of the northwest corner of Galilee 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 13 
 
 Hall. If his musing had been strictly translated 
 into words, "I must prove my rank," he would 
 have said. 
 
 As he stood mute and rapt, seeming to bestow 
 more brilliance than he took from it on the after 
 glow that filled the grim old room, his eye rested 
 on the line of Professors' houses that stood be- 
 tween him and his sunset, and musingly traveled 
 from ancient roof to roof till it reached the house 
 behind which the sun had dropped. This house 
 was not built by the pious founders, and had a 
 certain impertinent, worldly air as of a Professor 
 with property, or a committee of the Trustees who 
 conceded more than was expected by the West- 
 minster Catechism to contemporaneous ease and 
 architecture. It was in fact a fashionable modern 
 building, a Queen Anne country house, neither 
 more nor less. 
 
 As Bayard's glance reached the home of his 
 theological Professor it idly fell upon the second- 
 story front window, where signs of motion chanced 
 to arrest his attention. In this window the drawn 
 shade was slowly raised, and the lace drapery 
 curtains parted. A woman's figure stood for a 
 moment between the curtains. There were west- 
 ern windows, also, to the room, and the still 
 burning light shot through from side to side of 
 the wing. In it she could be seen clearly : she 
 stood with raised arm and hand ; there was some- 
 thing so warm and womanly and rich in the 
 outlines of that remote figure that the young man 
 
14 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 would have been no young man if his glance had 
 not rested upon it. 
 
 After a moment's perceptible hesitation he 
 turned away ; then stepped back and drew down 
 his old white cotton shade. 
 
n. 
 
 MORE than thirty years before the day of this 
 biography, a blue-eyed girl sat in her brother's 
 home in Beacon Street, weighing the problem 
 which even then had begun to shake the social 
 world every year at crocus time, Where shall we 
 spend the summer ? 
 
 When Mary Worcester's gentle mind, waver- 
 ing between the hills and the shore with the pleas- 
 ant agitation of a girl who has never known any 
 compulsion severer than her own young choice 
 upon her fate, turned in the direction of the 
 mountain village which her mother used to fancy, 
 it seemed the least important of acts or facts, and 
 was so regarded by her brother ; for Hermon 
 Worcester was a preoccupied young man, more 
 absorbed in adding to his fortune-, inherited in 
 wool, than in studying the natural history of an 
 attractive orphaned younger sister, left, obviously, 
 by Providence upon his hands. 
 
 So, properly chaperoned and luxuriously out- 
 fitted, to the hills went Mary Worcester that con= 
 elusive summer of her life ; and the village of 
 Bethlehem a handful then, a hamlet, if one 
 should compare it with the luxurious and impor- 
 tant place of resort known to our own day re- 
 
16 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 ceived, as unconsciously as she gave, the presence 
 of this young visitor whose lot was destined to 
 become so fair a leaf bound in with the village 
 history. 
 
 They are not usually the decisions to which we 
 give the most thought that most control our lives, 
 but those to which we give the least ; and this city 
 girl glided into her country holiday as unaware as 
 the rest of us are when we cross the little misty 
 space that separates freedom from fate. 
 
 She was not an extraordinary girl ; unless we 
 should consider extraordinary a certain kind of 
 moral beauty to which the delicacy of her face 
 and form gave marked expression. Such beauty 
 she assuredly possessed. Her head had a certain 
 poise never to be found except in women to whom 
 we may apply the beautiful adjective "high- 
 minded." Her eyes and the curve of her lip bore 
 this out ; and she had the quality of voice no 
 more to be copied by a woman of the world than 
 a pure heart is to be imitated by a schemer. 
 
 She was not an intellectual woman in our 
 modern sense of the word. She was a bright, 
 gentle girl ; more devout than her mates who rode 
 with her on picnics from the hotel, but as ready 
 to be happy as the rest ; she had a certain sweet 
 merriment, or merry sweetness, peculiar to herself, 
 and of which life and trouble never entirely 
 robbed her. If we add to this that she had the 
 angelic obstinacy sometimes to be found in unob 
 trusive and amiable people, her story, so far as it 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 17 
 
 concerns us, need not be the enigma that it always 
 remained to many of those who knew her best. 
 In this summer of which we speak, when Miss 
 Worcester had been for a couple of weeks among 
 the hills, it befell that her party, for some cause 
 not important enough to trace, moved into lodg- 
 ings across the road from the hotel, where they 
 commanded a cottage otherwise occupied only by 
 the proprietor or tenant of the house. The cot- 
 tage, after the fashion of its kind, was white of 
 surface, green of blinds, and calm of demeanor. 
 Its low front windows swept the great horizon 
 of Bethlehem without obstruction, and when one 
 drew the green-paper shade of the upper chamber 
 in the rear, a tall pine one of fourscore, the 
 picket of a rich and sombre grove brushed into 
 one's face, and eyed one like a grave, superior 
 rustic who knew his worth and one's own, and was 
 not to be distanced. 
 
 Mary Worcester, in a white, thin dress, was sit- 
 ting by this window one July day, looking down 
 on the long fingers of the pine bough, when she 
 was disturbed by a sudden agitation in the green 
 heart of the tree. The boughs shook and parted, 
 and the branch that lay over upon her window-sill 
 trembled, yielded, started, gave a smart, stinging 
 blow upon her bending cheek, and swept aside . 
 She sprang back to save her eyes, and, in doing 
 so, perceived the top round of a ladder rising from 
 the tree. 
 
 She was startled for the instant ; but observing 
 
18 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 that the ladder continued to rise steadily, and had 
 evidently higher aspirations than her window-sill, 
 she remained where she was. At this moment a 
 voice from below delicately suggested that if any 
 of the ladies were upstairs they might like to draw 
 the shade, as some repairs were necessary upon 
 the roof. The speaker was sorry to incommode 
 anybody, and would withdraw as soon as possible. 
 
 Owing, perhaps, to that kind of modesty which 
 feels an embarrassment at being recognized, the 
 young girl did not draw her shade, but moved 
 into the adjoining room while the carpenter 
 climbed the ladder. The doors and windows were 
 open through, and she stood for a moment un- 
 certain, her light dress swaying in the draught. 
 Then, turning, she looked back at the mechanic. 
 At that moment his face and shoulders were on, 
 a level with her window. To her surprise, she 
 recognized the man as their host, the owner of the 
 cottage. 
 
 In a few moments a stout arm struck the roof 
 over her head, and resounding blows shook the 
 cottage sturdily, while a few old shingles flew past 
 her window and troubled the pine-tree, which, 
 shivering at the indignity, cast them to the moss 
 below. 
 
 To escape the clamor, Miss Worcester tossed 
 on her straw hat and fled below stairs. Her 
 friends were all out and the house was empty. 
 She wandered about such of the lower rooms as 
 she had the right to enter, for a few moments, and 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 19 
 
 then strolled out aimlessly into the grove. She 
 flung herself down on the pine needles in the idle 
 reverie of youth and ease and health ; no graver 
 purpose in life than to escape the noise of a shin- 
 gler's hammer appeared to her. When the blows 
 upon the roof had ceased she rose and went back. 
 At the foot of the pine-tree, with his ladder on his 
 shoulder, unexpectedly stood the man. 
 
 He was a well-built man, young and attractive 
 to the eye. He did not look as rugged as his 
 class, and showed, proportionately, more refine- 
 ment. His eyes were dark and large, and had the 
 sadness of a misunderstood dog. He raised them 
 in one swift look to the young girl. She drifted 
 by in her white dress with her straw hat on her 
 arm ; her hair was tumbled and bright ; a little 
 spot on one cheek, where she had rested it upon 
 her arm, burned red. She smiled and said some- 
 thing, she did not know what. The mechanic 
 lifted his old straw hat : the little act had the ease 
 of town-bred gentlemen ; something about it sur- 
 prised the young lady, and she lingered a moment. 
 
 " And so you mend the roof for us ? " she said, 
 with her merry sweetness. " We thank you, sir." 
 
 "It is my business," replied the mechanic a 
 little coldly. But his eyes were not cold, and 
 they regarded her with deferent though daring 
 steadiness. 
 
 " You are then the carpenter. Are you sure ? " 
 she persisted audaciously. 
 
 " That," replied her host, after a silence in 
 
20 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 which she heard her own heart leap, " is for you 
 to determine." He bowed, shouldered the ladder 
 which he had let drop, and passed on into the 
 shed with it. His lodger, with burning cheeks, 
 fled to her room, and drew down the green-paper- 
 shade. 
 
 The following day was Sunday, and the city 
 lodgers in a party attended the village church. 
 Mary Worcester, daintily dressed and devoutly 
 inclined, sat with her head bowed upon the rail of 
 the pew before her. When the village choir re- 
 cited the opening fugue she did not move ; but 
 when the minister's voice broke the pleasant 
 silence that followed, and the invocatory prayer 
 filled the meeting-house, she lifted her eyes to the 
 pulpit, and behold, he who had shingled the cot- 
 tage yesterday was the preacher of to-day. 
 
 The services took their usual course. The scent 
 oT lilacs came in at the open windows of the coun- 
 try church. The rustic choir sang. The minister 
 had an educated voice and agreeable manner. He 
 did not preach a great sermon, but he spoke in a 
 manly fashion, read the Bible without affectation, 
 and prayed like a believer. It was not until the 
 close of the service that he suffered his glance to 
 rest upon the pew occupied by his lodgers, and 
 thus he perceived the deepened color and the 
 gentle agitation of her face. Their eyes met, and 
 the fate of their lives was sealed. 
 
 At first they read their idyl with terror in their 
 joy. She by her experience of the world, he by 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 21 
 
 his inexperience thereof, knew what it meant for 
 them to plight their troth. But Almighty Love 
 had laid its hand upon them : riot the false god, 
 nor the sorcerer, nor the worldling, nor the mathe- 
 matician, that steal the name, none of these 
 masqueraders moved them. 
 
 Mary Worcester and Joseph Bayard sat undei 
 the pine-trees of the grove behind the minister's 
 cottage and faced their fate. 
 
 u I am a country parson," said the young man 
 proudly, "and a carpenter, as your brother will 
 remind you. I learned the trade to put myself 
 through college, a fresh-water college up in Ver- 
 mont. Never mind the name. I doubt if he has 
 ever heard of it. My father was the schoolmaster 
 of our village. He was poor. My mother was an 
 invalid for twenty years. It cost us a good deal 
 to take care of her. After he died, you see it fell 
 to me. I did the best I could for her. She died 
 this spring. I never could go very far away from 
 her. She liked to see me often, and it cost a good 
 deal to get suitable nurses. She needed other 
 things, of course. I was in debt, too, for my edu- 
 cation. I've been paying that off by degrees. 
 Take it all, I 've got run down, somehow. Mother 
 used to say I had her constitution. The people 
 here called me to supply awhile, but they said I 
 had too poor health to settle without trial. I 
 don't wonder. They don't want a minister to die 
 of consumption on their hands." 
 
22 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 He stopped abruptly, and cast a bitter look at 
 the young girl's drooping face to see how these 
 blows struck that gentle surface. She did not lift 
 it, but by the space of a breath she seemed to stir 
 and tremble toward him. 
 
 " I love you," said the young man, flinging hk 
 thin hands out as if he thrust her from him. " A 
 carpenter-parson, without a dollar or a pulpit he 
 can call his own, and some day doomed to be a 
 sick man at that ! Go ! I will never ask you to 
 be my wife. Beacon Street ! Do you think there 
 is a man in Beacon Street who will ever love you 
 as I do ? Try it. Go and try. Go back to your 
 brother. Tell him I scorned to ask you to marry 
 me for your sake, oh my Love ! " 
 
 His voice fell into the whisper of unutterable 
 passion and sacrifice, and he covered his face and 
 groaned. Then Mary Worcester lifted her un- 
 worldly eyes and looked upon him as a woman 
 looks but once in life, and upon but one. 
 
 " But if," she said, " I should ask you ? " 
 
 He gasped, and sprang to his feet. Then he 
 saw how she trembled before him. And she 
 stretched up her arms. So he took her to his 
 heart ; and before the snow fell upon the hills of 
 Bethlehem she had become his wife. 
 
 Life dealt with them as the coldest head on 
 Beacon Street might have predicted. Her brother 
 fell at first into burning anger, and then into a 
 frozen rage. When the thing became inevitable, 
 he treated her civilly, for he was a gentleman? 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 23 
 
 more than that she never sought from him, and 
 did not receive. She married her country parson 
 intelligently, deliberately, and joyously, and shared 
 his lot without an outcry. She knew one year of 
 blessedness, and treasured it as a proof of para- 
 dise to come. She knew one such year as the 
 saddest of us would die to know, and the gladdest 
 could not look upon without a pang of divine 
 envy. She knew what love, elect, supreme, and 
 unspotted from the world, as the old words say, 
 can give a woman, and can do for her. And then 
 she reached the chapter where the plot turns in 
 the beautiful, delirious story, and she read the 
 sequel through, a brave, proud woman, calling 
 herself blessed to the end. 
 
 The minister's health failed, as was to be fore- 
 seen. He could not keep his parish, "as she 
 might have known," said Hermon Worcester to 
 the lady (her name was Rollins, by the way) who 
 had chaperoned that summer party, and whom the 
 brother had never succeeded in forgiving. Joseph 
 Bayard descended from his pulpit to -his carpen- 
 ter's bench, and his high-born wife did not protest. 
 " A man must feel that he is at work," she said. 
 She mentioned the circumstance to her brother 
 proudly when she acknowledged the last check; 
 for she received her mother's inheritance duly, and 
 spent it rapidly. She supplied the ailing man 
 with such comforts as Bethlehem had never seen. 
 She lavished all the attainable luxuries familiar to 
 her youth upon the invalid in the frozen mountain 
 
24 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 home. Nothing and no one could restrain her. It 
 was her way, and love's. That divine compassion 
 which takes possession of a woman's soul when 
 passion subsides from it swept a torrent of pity 
 and tenderness about the enfeebled man. She 
 persuaded him at last out of the mountain cottage 
 which had watched their courtship and knowr 
 their honeymoon, and carried him to Italy, where 
 she played the last desperate chances in the game 
 of life and love and death that thousands of women 
 have staked and lost before her. 
 
 In the midst of this experiment the two re- 
 turned abruptly to America, and hid themselves 
 in the Bethlehem cottage ; and there, in the late 
 and bitter mountain spring, their boy was born. 
 
 The baby was a year old when his father died. 
 Mary Bayard looked at the frozen hills across the 
 freezing grave. In all the world only the moun- 
 tains seemed to understand he*r. Her brother 
 came up to the funeral, and politely buried the 
 carpenter, whose widow was civilly invited to re- 
 turn to the home of her youth ; but she thanked 
 him, and shook her head. 
 
 " I will stay here among our people. They love 
 me, some of them. They all loved him. I have 
 friends here. There is no kindness kinder than 
 that in the hearts of country neighbors. I 've 
 found that out. Beacon Street has forgotten me 
 long ago, Hermon. There is nothing left in com- 
 mon between us now." 
 
 " At least there is your birth and training 1 " 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 26 
 
 exclaimed her brother, flushing hotly. " I should 
 think," glancing around the white cottage, crowded 
 with little luxuries that love and ingenuity could 
 hardly convert into comforts (by his standard of 
 comfort) in that place and climate, " I should 
 think you would like to come back to a good 
 Magee furnace and a trained maid ! " 
 
 " There have been times " she began slowly, 
 but checked herself. " Those are gone by now. 
 This is the place where I have been a happy 
 woman." 
 
 " There is something in that," replied the man 
 of business in a softer tone. He looked at her a 
 trifle wistfully. 
 
 A certain tenderness for her returned in his 
 heart after that. He cared for her as he could, 
 sometimes taking the chilly journey to see her in 
 winter, and spending a part of every summer in 
 the Bethlehem cottage. 
 
 Thus he came to discover in himself a root of 
 interest in the boy. When the child was three 
 years old, he induced his sister to come to Boston 
 to consult a famous physician. 
 
 t& She is dying of no disease," he told the doctor 
 irritably. " She had fine health. That ailing fel- 
 low wore it all out. He was a heavy burden. She 
 carried everything for years. She spent almost 
 all her property on him : it was not trusteed ; it is 
 nearly gone ; I could n't help it. She has spent 
 herself in the same way. She is that kind of 
 woman." 
 
26 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " I have seen such," replied the physician gently, 
 " but not too many of them. I may as well tell 
 you at the outset that I can probably do nothing 
 for her." 
 
 Nor could he. She lingered, smiling and quiet, 
 in her brother's house for a few months ; then 
 begged to be taken home. Fires were kindled in 
 the mountain cottage, and the affectionate villagers 
 brought in their house-plants to welcome her ; and 
 there, on the morning after her return, they found 
 her with her cheek turned upon the soft curls of 
 the child's head. The boy was asleep. But he 
 waked when he was spoken to. It was his uncle 
 who took him from his mother's arms. 
 
 They buried her beside her husband ; and her 
 husband's people wept about her grave, for they 
 had loved this strange and gentle lady; and they 
 cut their white geraniums and heliotrope to bring to 
 the funeral, and sighed when they saw the cottage 
 under the pine grove stripped and closed. For the 
 boy was taken to the home of his mother's girl- 
 hood, and reared there as she had been ; delicately, 
 and as became a lad of gentle birth, who will do 
 what is expected of him, and live like the rest of 
 his world. 
 
III. 
 
 IT had always been considered a mistake that 
 the Professors' houses stood on the " morning side '' 
 of the street. But this, like many another archi- 
 tectural or social criticism, was of more interest 
 to the critic than to the criticised. In point of 
 fact, the western faces of the dwellings consecrated 
 to the Faculty received the flood tide of the sea 
 of sun that rose and ebbed between Cesarea and 
 Wachusett. A man's study, a child's nursery, a 
 woman's sewing-room, fled the front of the house 
 as a matter of course ; and the " afternoon side " 
 of the dwelling welcomed them bountifully. 
 
 As Professor Carruth had been heard to say, that 
 side of the street on which a man is born may deter- 
 mine his character and fate beyond repeal. The 
 observation, if true, is tenfold truer of a woman, to 
 whom a house is a shell, a prison, or a chrysalis. 
 
 The Professor's daughter, who had not been 
 born in Cesarea, but in the city of New York, took 
 turns at viewing her father's home in one of these 
 threefold aspects. On that winter day of which 
 we have already spoken, she might, if urged to it, 
 have selected the least complimentary of the three 
 terms. The day had been bleak, bright, and inter- 
 minable. She had tried to take the morning walk to 
 
28 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 the post-office, which all able-bodied Cesareans peni- 
 tentially performed six days in the week ; and had 
 been blown home in that state just so far from add- 
 ing another to the list of " deaths from exposure " 
 that one gets no sympathy, and yet so near to this 
 result that one must sit over the register the rest 
 of the morning to thaw out. 
 
 After dinner she had conscientiously resumed 
 her study of Herbert Spencer's Law of Rhythm, but 
 had tossed the book away impatiently, she was 
 metaphysical only when she was bored, and had 
 joined her mother at the weekly mending-basket. 
 The cold, she averred, had struck in. Her brain 
 was turning to an icicle like that. She pointed 
 to the snow-man which the boys in the fitting-school 
 had built in front of the pump that supplied their 
 dormitories with ice-water for toilet uses ; this was 
 carried the length of the street in dripping pails 
 whose overflow froze upon one's boots. 
 
 There had been a rain before this last freeze, 
 and the head of the snow-man (carefully moulded, 
 and quite Greek) had turned into a solid ball of 
 ice. 
 
 This chilly gentleman rose imposingly from 
 behind a desk of snow. Manuscripts of sleet lay 
 in his frozen hand. An old silk hat, well glazed 
 with drippings from the elm-tree, was pitched irrev- 
 erently upon the back of his head. 
 
 "They say," replied Mrs. Carruth complain- 
 ingly, " that the snow-man is meant to take off one 
 of the Professors." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 29 
 
 " Do they ? I should think he might be. Which 
 one ? " answered the Professor's daughter. Her 
 languid eyes warmed into merriment. " I call 
 that fun." 
 
 " I call it irreverent," sighed the Professor's 
 wife. " I call it profane." 
 
 " Now, Mother ! " The young lady laid a green, 
 theological stocking across her shapely knee, and 
 pulled the toe through the foot argumentatively, 
 " Don't you think that is a little over-emphasized ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carruth lifted her mild, feminine counte- 
 nance from that shirt of the Professor's which she 
 always found absorbing, the one whose button- 
 holes gave out, while the "mttons stayed on. She 
 regarded her daughter with a puzzled disapproval. 
 She was not used to such phrases as " over-empha- 
 sis " when she was young. 
 
 " Helen, Helen," she complained, " you do not 
 realize what a trial you are to me. If there is any- 
 thing sacrilegious or heretical to be found any- 
 where, you are sure to to you are certain to 
 find it interesting," ended the mother vaguely. 
 
 " See, Mother! See !" interrupted Helen. Her 
 laugh bubbled merrily through the sewing-room. 
 " Just look out of the window, and see ! The 
 boys have stuck a whisk broom for a feather in 
 the snow professor's hat ! And now they 're giv- 
 ing him spectacles and a fountain pen. What 
 delicious heresy, isn't it, Mother? Come and 
 look!" 
 
 But after these trifling and too frequent conflicts 
 
30 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 with her mother, Helen never failed to feel a cer- 
 tain reaction and depression. She evaded the 
 mending-basket that afternoon as soon as possible, 
 and slipped into her own room ; which, as we have 
 said, was in a wing of the house, and looked from 
 east to west. She could not see the snow professor 
 here. Nobody now accused her of heresy. The 
 shouts of the boys had begun to die away. Only 
 the mountains and the great intervale were peace- 
 fully visible from the warm window. Through 
 the cold one the Theological Seminary occupied 
 the perspective solidly. 
 
 Nature had done a good deal for the Christian 
 religion, or at least for that view of it represented 
 by our Seminary, when that institution was estab- 
 lished at Cesarea, a matter of nearly a century 
 ago. But art had not in this instance proved her- 
 self the handmaid of religion. The theological 
 buildings, a row of three, Galilee and Damascus 
 Halls to right and left of the ancient chapel, 
 rose grimly against the cold Cesarea sky. These 
 buildings were all of brick, red, rectangular, and 
 unrelieved ; as barren of ornament or broken lines 
 as a packing-box, and yet curiously possessed of a 
 certain dignity of their own ; such as we see in 
 aged country folk unfashionably dressed, but sure 
 of their local position. Not a tremor seemed ever 
 to disturb the calm, red faces of these old build- 
 ings, when the pretty chapel and the graceful 
 library of modern taste crept in under the elms of 
 the Seminary green to console the spirit of the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 31 
 
 contemporary Cesarean, who has visited the Louvre 
 and the Vatican as often as the salary will allow ; 
 who has tickets to the Symphony Concerts in Bos- 
 ton, and feels no longer obliged to conceal the 
 fact that he occasionally witnesses a Shakespear- 
 ean play. 
 
 Helen Carruth, for one, did not object to the 
 old red boxes, and held them in respect ; not for 
 their architectural qualities, it must be owned, nor 
 because of the presence therein of a hundred 
 young men for whose united or separate person- 
 alities she had never cared a fig. But of the 
 Cesarean sunsets, which are justly famous, she 
 was observant with the enthusiasm of a girl who 
 has so little social occupation that a beautiful 
 landscape is still an object of attention, even of 
 affection. And where does reflected sunset take 
 to itself the particular glory that it takes on 
 Cesarea Hill ? 
 
 The Professor's daughter was in the habit of 
 watching from her eastern window to see that 
 row of old buildings take fire from the western 
 sky behind her ; window after window, four stories 
 of them, thirty-two to a front on either side, and 
 the solemn disused chapel in the midst. It would 
 have been a pleasant sight to any delicate eye; 
 but to the girl, with her religiously trained imagi- 
 nation and unoccupied fancy, it was a beautiful 
 and a poetic one. She had learned to watch for 
 it on sunny days in her lonely Cesarea winters, 
 between her visits to New York or Boston. Now 
 
32 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Damascus Hall, and now Galilee, received the 
 onset of flame ; now this floor reflected it, and 
 now that ; certain windows became refracting 
 crystals, and flung the gorgeous color back ; cer- 
 tain others drew it in and drank it down into 
 their glowing hearts. One belonging to a 
 northwest corner room in Galilee Hall blazed 
 magnificently on that evening of which we telL 
 It attracted her eye, and held it, for the fiery 
 flood rolled up against that old sash and seemed 
 to break there, and pour in, deep into the unseen 
 room, deeper than any other spot could hold. 
 That window breathed fire as martyrs do, in 
 ecstasy. It seemed to inhale and exhale beauty 
 and death like a living thing whose doom was 
 glory, and whose glory was doom. But the splen- 
 did panorama was always swift ; she had to catch 
 it while it lasted ; moments unrolled and furled 
 it. She stood with uplifted arm between her lace 
 curtains ; her eyes smiled, and her lips were 
 parted. The old Bible similes of her childhood 
 came inevitably even upon her lighter moods. It 
 was not religious emotion, but the power of asso- 
 ciation and poetic perception which made her say 
 aloud : 
 
 " And the city had no need of the sun ... to 
 shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it." 
 
 As the words fell from her lips the sun dropped 
 beyond Wachusett. The fire flashed, and ran, 
 and faded. Cold, dull, delicate colors replaced 
 the glory on Galilee Hall ; the burst of gold had 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 33 
 
 burned out and melted ; the tints of cool precious 
 stones crept upon the window whose display had 
 pleased her. She passed her hand over her eyes, 
 for she was blinded by the dazzling effect. When 
 she looked again, she noticed that the old white 
 shade in the northwest corner room was drawn. 
 
 She turned away, feeling an unreasonable sense 
 of discomfort, as if she had been rebuffed in 
 an unconscious intrusion. At that moment she 
 heard her father moving about his study, which 
 was below her room. The sound of flying slippers 
 and the creak of his whirling study-chair indicated 
 that his work was over for the day, and that he 
 was about to take his evening pilgrimage to the 
 post-office. His daughter ran down to see him. 
 
 He glanced up from the arctic overshoes which 
 he was tugging on over his boots, with a relieved 
 and pleasant look. 
 
 " Ah, Helen ! You are just in time. I need 
 you, my child. Just write out some invitations 
 for me, will you ? in your mother's name. She 
 seems to be too much absorbed in some domestic 
 duties to attend to it, and I must have those 
 omitted men to tea this week. Your mother says 
 she can't have them to-morrow on account of 
 I have forgotten the reason, but it was an impor- 
 tant one." 
 
 " She has some preserves to scald over. Yes," 
 said Helen, with ripples in her eyes, " I think 
 they are quinces. At any rate, it is of national 
 importance. Friday, did you say ? Certainly. I 
 
34 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 will have them written by the time you have se- 
 lected your cane, Father. Who are these ? The 
 A's? OrtheC's?" 
 
 "They are the B's," answered the Professor, 
 looking over his assortment of handsome canes 
 with the serious interest of a sophomore. If the 
 Professor of Theology had one human weakness, it 
 was for handling a fine cane. This luxury was tc 
 him what horses, yachts, and dry wines may be 
 to different men. His daughter was quite right 
 in assuming that the notes of invitation would be 
 written before he had suited himself out of a dozen 
 possibilities to his delicate Oriental grapestick with 
 the heavy ivory handle. 
 
 "They are the B's," he repeated abstractedly. 
 "Two B's, and yes, one C. One of the B's I 
 would not overlook on any account. He is that 
 B who was preengaged, for some reason, in the 
 autumn. He must be invited again. His uncle 
 is one of the Trustees. There 's the catalogue ; 
 you '11 find the address Galilee Hall, Bayard, 
 Ernanuel. Don't make a mistake, my dear; and 
 I hope you will take pains to be at home and help 
 us entertain them." 
 
 " I was going in to the concert," said Helen dis- 
 appointedly, pausing with her pen suspended. " I 
 meant to spend the night with Clara Rollins. But 
 no, I won't, Father, if you care about it." 
 
 "Thank you, my dear," he said gently. He 
 kissed her as he went out, and Helen smiled con- 
 tentedly ; she was deeply attached to her father. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 35 
 
 In his home the Professor of Theology was the 
 most loving and beloved of men. 
 
 There came up a warm storm that week, and by 
 Friday Cesarea Hill swam in a sea of melted snow 
 The two B's and one C waded their way to theii 
 Professor's house to tea that evening, across rills 
 and rivers of ice-water, and through mounds of 
 slush. Bayard sank over rubbers amid-stream 
 more than once ; he wore the usual evening shoe 
 of society. He was always a well-dressed man, 
 having never known any other way of living. It 
 was different with his fellow-students. That one 
 C, for example, who strode across the Seminary 
 green in comfort and rubber boots, had provided, 
 it seemed, no other method of appearance within 
 doors. His pantaloons were tucked into the rub- 
 ber boots at the knees, and had the air of intend- 
 ing to stay there. 
 
 " Look here, man ! " gasped Bayard, as the 
 young men removed their overcoats in the large 
 and somewhat stately hall of the Professor's house. 
 " You have forgotten your shoes ! " 
 
 " I have some slippers in my pockets, if you 
 think them necessary," replied the other. "You 
 know more about such things than I do." 
 
 The speaker produced a pair of slippers, worked 
 in worsted by his sister ; a white rose ornamented 
 the toe of each. As he stooped to put them on, 
 Bayard observed that the man wore a flannel shirt 
 of the blue-gray tint at that time preferred by day 
 laborers, and that he was guiltless of linen. 
 
36 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 The three guests entered the drawing-room, 
 headed by the flannel shirt. The one C sat down 
 on the largest satin easy-chair, stretching his em- 
 broidered slippers on the Persian rug with such 
 dignified unconsciousness of the unusual as one 
 might go far to see outside of Cesarea, and might 
 not witness once in a lifetime there. Occupied 
 with the embarrassment of this little incident, 
 Bayard did not notice at first that the daughter of 
 the house was absent from the parlor. He fell to 
 talking with his favorite Professor eagerly ; they 
 were deep in the discussion of the doctrine of elec- 
 tion as taught in a rival seminary, by a more lib- 
 eral chair, when Mrs. Carruth drew the attention 
 of her husband to the gentleman of the flannel 
 shirt, and seated herself by Bayard. 
 
 " I hope you are not very hungry ? " she began 
 in her literal voice. "We are waiting for my 
 daughter. She attends the Symphony Concerts 
 Fridays, and the coach is late to-night from the 
 five o'clock train." 
 
 " Oh, that coach ! " laughed Bayard. "/ walk 
 if I want my supper." 
 
 " And so did I," said a soft voice at his side. 
 
 " Why, Helen, Helen ! " complained the Profes- 
 sor's wife. 
 
 The young lady stood serenely, awaiting her 
 father's introduction to the three students. She 
 bowed sedately to the other B and the C. Her 
 eyes scintillated when she turned back to Bayard. 
 She seemed to be brimming over with suppressed 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 37 
 
 amusement. She took the chair beside him, for 
 her mother (who never trusted Cesarea service 
 to the exclusion of the old-fashioned, housewifely 
 habit of looking at her table before her guests sat 
 down) had slipped from the room. 
 
 " You walk from the station a mile in this 
 going?" began Bayard, laughing. 
 
 " No ; " she shook her head. " I waded. But 
 I got here. The coach had nine inside and five on 
 top. It has n't come yet. I promised Father I 'd 
 be here, you see." 
 
 Bayard's quick eye observed that Miss Carruth 
 was in dinner dress ; her gown was silk, and pur- 
 ple, and fitted her remarkably well ; she had a 
 sumptuous figure ; he reflected that she had taken 
 the time and trouble to dress for these three theo- 
 logues as she would have done for a dinner in 
 town. He saw that she gave one swift glance at 
 the man in the flannel shirt, who was absorbed in 
 the Professor's story about the ordination of some- 
 body who was rejected on the doctrine of pro- 
 bation. 
 
 But after that she looked at the student's head, 
 which was good. Upon the details of his costume 
 no eye in the drawing-room rested that evening, 
 again. That student went out from Cesarea Semi- 
 nary to be a man of influence and intellect; his 
 name became a distinguished one, and in his prime 
 society welcomed him proudly. But if the Profes- 
 sor's family had been given the catalogue and the 
 Inquisition to identify him, it may be questioned 
 
38 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 whether thumbscrews would have wrung his name 
 from them. It being one of the opportunities of 
 Christianity that it may make cultivated gentle- 
 men out of poor and ignorant boys, Cesarea ladies 
 take pride in their share of the process. 
 
 At tea for Cesarea still held to her country 
 tradition of an early dinner Bayard found him 
 self seated opposite the Professor's daughter. The 
 one C sat beside her, and she graciously proceeded 
 to bewitch that gentleman wholly out of his wits, 
 and half out of his theology. Bayard heard her 
 talking about St. Augustine. She called him au 
 interesting monomaniac. 
 
 The table was served in the manner to which 
 Bayard was used, and was abundantly lighted by 
 candles softly shaded in yellow. In the pleasant 
 shimmer, in her rich dress, with the lace at her 
 throat and wrists, she seemed, by pretty force of 
 contrast with the prevailing tone of the village, 
 the symbol of beauty, ease, and luxury. Bayard 
 thought how preeminent she looked beside that 
 fellow in the shirt. He could not help wondering 
 if she would seem as imposing in Beacon Street. 
 After a little study of the subject he concluded 
 that it would not make much difference. She was 
 not precisely a beautiful woman, but she was, 
 certainly a woman of beauty. What was she? 
 Blonde ? She had too much vigor. But yes. 
 Her hair was as yellow as the gold lining of rich 
 silverware. She was one of the bright, deep 
 orange blondes; all her coloring was warm and 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE 39 
 
 brilliant. Only her eyes struck him as inade- 
 quate ; languid, indifferent, and not concerned 
 with her life. She gave the unusual effect of dark 
 eyes with bright hair. 
 
 While he was thinking about her in the inter 
 ludes of such chat as he could maintain with her 
 mother, who had asked him twice whether he 
 graduated this year, Miss Carruth turned unex- 
 pectedly and addressed him. The remark which 
 she made was not original; it was something 
 about the concerts : Did he not go in often ? She 
 had not asked the one C if he attended the Sym- 
 phony Concerts. But Mrs. Carruth now inquired 
 of that gentleman if he liked the last prepara- 
 tory lecture. The Professor was engaging the at- 
 tention of the other B. And Bayard and Helen 
 Carruth fell to conversing, undisturbed, across the 
 pleasant table. 
 
 He felt at home despite himself, in that easy 
 atmosphere, in that yellow light. The natural 
 sense of luxury crept around him softly. He 
 thought of his northwest room over there, rocking 
 in the gale, and of the big dish of apples at the 
 club table. He thought of the self-denials and 
 deprivations, little and large, which had accom- 
 panied his life at Cesarea ; he tried to remember 
 why he had chosen to do this or suffered that. 
 
 His ascetic ideals swam and blurred a little 
 before the personality of this warm, rich, human 
 girl. There was something even in the circum 
 stance of eating quail on toast, and sipping choco- 
 
40 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 late from a Dresden cup in an antique Dutch 
 spoon, which was disturbing to the devout imagi* 
 nation in Cesarea. 
 
 Over his sensitive face his high, grave look 
 passed suddenly, like the reflection thrown from 
 some unseen, passing light. 
 
 " I had better be at my room and at work," he 
 thought. 
 
 At that moment he became aware of a change in 
 the expression of the Professor's daughter. Her 
 languid eye had awaked. She was regarding him 
 with puzzled but evident attention. He threw off 
 his momentary depression with ready social ease, 
 and gayly said : 
 
 " You look as if you were trying to classify a 
 subject, Miss Carruth ; as if you wanted to put 
 something in its place and could n't do it/' 
 
 " I am," she admitted. " I do." 
 
 " And you succeed ? " 
 
 "No." She shook her head again. "I do not 
 find the label. I give it up." She laughed mer- 
 rily, and Bayard joined in the laugh. But to him- 
 self he said : 
 
 "She does me the honor to investigate me c 
 Plainly I am not the one C. Clearly I am not 
 the other B. Then what? She troubles herself 
 to wonder." 
 
 Then he remembered how many generations of 
 theological students had been the subject of the 
 young lady's gracious and indifferent observation. 
 She was, perhaps, twenty-five years old, and they 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 41 
 
 had filed through that dining-room alphabetically 
 the A's, the B's, the C's, the X's and the Z's 
 since she came, in short dresses, to Cesarea, when 
 her father gave up his New York parish for the 
 Chair of Theology. It occurred to Bayard that 
 she might have ceased to find either the genus or 
 the species theologus of thrilling personal interest, 
 by this time. 
 
 Then the Professor mentioned to the other B a 
 certain feature of the famous Presbyterian trial 
 for heresy, at that time wrenching the religious 
 world. Bayard turned to listen, and the discus- 
 sion which followed soon absorbed him. 
 
 The face of the Professor of Theology grew 
 grave as he approached the topic of his favorite 
 heresy. Stern lines cut themselves about his fine 
 mouth. His gentle eyes darkened. He felt keenly 
 the responsibility of the influence that he bore 
 over his students, even in hours of what he called 
 social relaxation, and the necessity of defending the 
 truth was vividly present to his trained conscience. 
 Bayard watched his host with troubled admira- 
 tion. It was with a start that he heard a woman's 
 voice sweetly breaking in upon the conversation. 
 She was speaking to the guest of the flannel 
 shirt. 
 
 "Oh, have you seen the snow professor since 
 the rain ? He 's melted into such a lovely slush ! " 
 
 " Helen ! " rebuked her mother plaintively. 
 * Helen, Helen!" 
 
 But the Professor smiled, a warm smile pecul 
 
42 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 iar to himself. He shot a tender look across the 
 table at his daughter. He did not resume the 
 subject of the Presbyterian trial. 
 
 "The trouble with the snow professor," sug- 
 gested Bayard, "is that he had the ice in his 
 head, but the sun at his heart." 
 
 Helen Carruth turned quickly towards him 
 Her glance lingered into a look distinctly per^ 
 sonal and indistinctly grateful. She made no 
 answer, but her eyes and the student's understood 
 each other. 
 
IV. 
 
 IT is manifestly as unfair to judge of a place by 
 its March as to judge a man's disposition by the 
 hour before dinner. As the coldest exteriors may 
 conceal the warmest loves, so the repelling Cesa- 
 rean winter holds in store one of the most alluring 
 summers known to inland New England. The grass 
 is riper, the flowers richer, the ranks of elms are 
 statelier, the skies are gentler, and the people hap- 
 pier than could be expected of Cesarean theol- 
 ogy. Nay. theology itself unbends in April, softens 
 in May, warms in June, and grows sunny and hu- 
 man by the time the students are graduated and 
 turned loose upon the world, a world which is, 
 on the whole, so patient with their inexperience, 
 and so ready to accept as spiritual leaders men 
 whose own life's lessons are yet to be learned, and 
 whose own views of the great mysteries which they 
 dare to interpret are so much more assured than 
 they will be ten years later. 
 
 Emanuel Bayard and Helen Carruth walksd to- 
 gether beneath the ancient trees that formed the 
 great cross upon the Seminary green. 
 
 The snow professor was melted out of existence ; 
 head of ice and lecture of sleet had vanished 
 months ago. Dandelions glittered in the long 
 grass. Sparrows built nests under the awful 
 
44 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 chapel eaves. It was moonlight and warm, a 
 June night, and the elms cast traceries of fine 
 shadows, like a net, about the feet of the young 
 people ; they seemed to become entangled in the 
 meshes, as they strolled up and down and to and 
 fro, after the simple fashion of the town ; which 
 pays no more attention to a couple sauntering in 
 broad day, or broad moonlight, in the sight of 
 gods and men, across the Seminary " yard," than 
 it does to the sparrows in the chapel eaves. 
 
 They were not lovers, these two ; hardly friends, 
 at least in the name of the thing ; she was not an 
 accessible girl, and he was a preoccupied man. A 
 certain comfortable acquaintance, such as grows 
 without drama in the quiet society of university 
 towns, had brought them together, as chance led, 
 without distinct volition on the part of either. 
 He would graduate in three days. He had called 
 to say good-by to the Professor's family, and had 
 taken Miss Helen out to see the shadows on the 
 cross where the paths met the mild and accepted 
 form of dissipation in Cesarea ; for Professors' 
 daughters. They walked without agitation, and 
 talked without sentiment. Truth to tell, their 
 talk was serious, above their years, and beyond 
 their relation. 
 
 The fact was that Emanuel Bayard had that 
 spring with difficulty received his license to preach. 
 There was a flaw in his theology. The circum. 
 stance was momentous to him. His uncle, for one 
 thing, had been profoundly displeased ; had re- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 45 
 
 buked, remonstrated, and commanded ; had indeed 
 gone so far as to offend his nephew with threats 
 of a nature which the young man did not divulge 
 to Miss Carruth, for his natural reserve was deep. 
 She had noticed that he did not confide in her as 
 readily as the other students she had known. But 
 he had told her enough. The Professor's daugh- 
 ter, too well used to the ecclesiastical machinery 
 and ferment of the day, was as familiar with its 
 phases and phrases as other girls are with the 
 steps of a cotillion or the matrimonial chances of 
 a watering-place. She knew quite well the tre- 
 mendous importance of what had happened. 
 
 " I understand," she said in her deep, rich, al- 
 most boyish voice, " I understand it all perfectly. 
 You would n't say you did, when you did n't." 
 
 V How could I ? " interrupted Bayard. 
 
 " You could n't, and so they stirred up that fuss. 
 You were more honest than the other fellows. 
 And you were punished for it." 
 
 " You are good to put it in that way, but what 
 right have I to take it in that way?" urged 
 Bayard wistfully. " The other fellows are just as 
 good men as I ; better, most of them. Fenton 
 passed all right, and the rest. I don't feel in- 
 clined to parade my ecclesiastical honesty and set 
 myself above them, in my own mind, I mean. 
 I have dropped below them in everybody else's ; of 
 course I know that." 
 
 " Whom do you mean by everybody else ? " de- 
 manded Helen quickly. " Your uncle, Mr. Her- 
 
46 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 mon Worcester? The Trustees? The Faculty? 
 And those old men on the council? Oh, I know 
 them ! Have n't I dined and breakfasted on 
 Councils and Faculties ever since we came here? 
 Have n't I eaten and drunken and breathed Trus- 
 tees and doctrines, and what is sound, and what 
 is n't, and Don't you tell, but I never was 
 afraid of a Trustee in my life never ! I don't 
 know another soul in Cesarea who is n't, not 
 even my father. When I was a little girl, I used 
 to ruffle up their beaver hats the wrong way, out 
 in the hall, so they would look dissipated when 
 they went over to the chapel. Then I hid behind 
 the door to see. But I never told of it before. 
 You won't tell your uncle, will you? I hid a 
 kitten in his hat, once, and when he came out of 
 the study the hat was walking all over the hall 
 floor, without visible means of locomotion." 
 
 Bayard laughed, as she had meant he should. 
 The tense expression of his face relaxed; she 
 watched him narrowly. 
 
 " Come," she said in a changed tone, " take me 
 home, please. The house is full of Anniversary 
 company. I ought to be there." 
 
 He turned at her command, and took her 
 towards her father's house. They walked in 
 silence down the long Seminary path. She was 
 dressed in light muslin with a violet on it, and 
 wore ribbons that matched the violet. She had a 
 square of white lace thrown over her bright hair. 
 The meshes of the tracery from the elm-trees fell 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 47 
 
 thickly under her quick tread. At the stone posts 
 which guarded the great lawns, she hesitated; 
 then set her feet resolutely out from the delicate 
 net into the bright spaces of the open road. 
 
 "Mr. Bayard," she said in her clear voice, 
 "you are an honest man. It is better to be that 
 than to be a minister." 
 
 "If one cannot be both," amended Bayard. 
 " But to start in like this, with a slur attached to 
 one's name at the beginning, I don't suppose 
 you understand how it dooms a fellow, Miss Car- 
 ruth. Its equivalent would be almost enough to 
 disbar a man in law, or to ruin him in medicine." 
 
 " I understand the whole miserable subject ! " 
 cried Helen hotly. " I am sick to my soul of it ! 
 I wish " She checked herself. " Let me see," 
 she added more calmly. " What was it they tor- 
 mented you about ? Eternal punishment ? " 
 
 " I managed to escape on that," said Bayard. 
 " I don't know anything about it, and I said so, 
 I think, myself, there is a good deal of cheap talk 
 afloat on that subject. Our newspapers and 
 novels are full of it. It is about the only difficult 
 doctrine in theology that outsiders understand the 
 relations of ; so they stick on that, and make 
 the most of it. It is an easy way of making 
 the Christian religion intolerable if one wants 
 to. My difficulty was rather with I see you 
 know something of our technical terms with 
 what we call verbal inspiration." 
 
 "Oh yes." Helen nodded. "Whether 'The 
 
48 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Lord will have war with Amalek from generation 
 to generation ' was inspired by Almighty God ; or 
 4 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Reuben. 
 Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naph- 
 tali,' and all that. I know. . . . Inspired moon- 
 shine ! I am a little bit of a heretic myself, Mr. 
 Bayard ; but I 'm not I 'm not as honest as 
 you ; I 'm not pious, either." 
 
 " I hope you don't think / am pious ! " began 
 Bayard resentfully. 
 
 But she laughed sweetly in his frowning face. 
 They stood at her father's high stone steps. The 
 Anniversary company were chatting in the parlors. 
 
 " Good-night," she said in a lower tone ; and 
 then more gently, " and good-by." 
 
 He started slightly at the word ; turned as if 
 he would have said something, but said it not. 
 He took her hand in silence ; then perceived that 
 she had withdrawn it suddenly, coldly, it seemed, 
 and had vanished from him up the steps of stone. 
 
 He walked back to Galilee Hall slowly. His 
 bent eyes traced the net of shadows around his 
 reluctant feet. What was that ? Inspired moon- 
 shine ? Inspired moonshine ! He lifted his face 
 and looked abroad on Cesarea Hill. 
 
 His head was heavy, and his heart throbbed. 
 Perhaps at that moment, if he had been asked 
 which was the greater mystery, God or woman, 
 this honest man could not have answered. 
 
 With sudden hunger for solitude, he went to 
 his room. But it was full of fellow-students 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 49 
 
 Fenton was there, and Tompkinton, Jaynes, Bent, 
 and Holt, and the middler. They received him 
 noisily, and he sat down among them. They 
 related the stories current in denominational cir- 
 cles, ecclesiastical jokes and rumors of sectarian 
 conflicts ; they interchanged gossip about who was 
 called where, and what churches were said to lack 
 supplies, the figures of salaries, the statistics of 
 revivals, and the prospects of settlement open to 
 the senior class. 
 
 Bayard listened silently. His heart was not 
 with them, nor in their talk. Yet he criticised 
 himself for criticising them. Besides, he had re- 
 ceived no call to settle anywhere. 
 
 Almost alone among the intellectual men of his 
 class, he found himself, at the end of his prepara- 
 tory education, undesired and unsummoiied by the 
 churches to fill a pulpit of them all. 
 
 He had done his share, like the rest, of that 
 preliminary preaching which decides the future of 
 a man in his profession ; but he stood, on the eve 
 of his graduation, among his mates, marked and 
 quivering, this sensitive fellow, that most 
 miserable of all educated, restless, and wretched 
 young men with whom our land abounds, " a min- 
 ister without a call." 
 
 He had said nothing to Helen Carruth about 
 fchis. A man does not tell a woman such things 
 until he has to. 
 
 Something in his face struck the students quiet 
 after a while, and they dropped away from the 
 room. His friend Fenton made the move. 
 
50 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " It is said," he whispered to Tompkinton, as 
 they clattered down the dusty stairs of Galilee 
 Hall, "that his trouble with that New Hampshire 
 Council has followed him. It is reported that his 
 license did not come easily. It has got abroad 
 that he is not sound. Nothing could be more 
 unfortunate or more unnecessary," added Fen- 
 ton in his too cheerful voice. There had been 
 no doubt of his theology. He had received three 
 calls. As yet he had accepted none. He ex- 
 pected to be married in the fall, and looked for a 
 larger salary. 
 
 Suddenly he stopped and clapped his hands to 
 his head. 
 
 " Bayard ! " he called loudly. " Bayard, come 
 to the window a minute ! " 
 
 The outline of Bayard's fine head appeared 
 faintly in the third-story window, against the 
 background of his unlighted room. The moon 
 was so bright that his face seemed to be a white 
 flame, as he looked down on his classmates from 
 that height. 
 
 " I brought up your mail," said Fenton, " and 
 forgot to tell you. You '11 find a letter lying on 
 your table behind the third volume of Dean 
 Alford. You keep your room so dark, I was 
 afraid you might n't see it." 
 
 Bayard thanked him, and groped for the letter ; 
 but he did not light the lamp to read it ; he sat on 
 in the moonlit room, alone and still. His heart 
 was hot within him as he remembered how the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 51 
 
 students talked. That vision which sets a man 
 apart from his fellows, and thus makes him mis- 
 erable or blessed, or both, beckoned to him with 
 distant, shining finger. His face fell into his 
 hands. Great God ! what did it mean to take 
 upon one's self that sacred Name in which a 
 Christian preacher stands before his fellow-men? 
 What had common pettiness or envy, narrow fear 
 or little weakness, to do with the soul of a teacher 
 of holiness? How easy to quibble and evade, 
 and fall into rank ! How hard to stand apart, to 
 look the cannon in the eye, alone ! 
 
 It is not easy for men of the world, of ordinary 
 business, pleasure, politics, and those professions 
 whose standards are pliable, to understand the 
 noble civil war between the nature and the posi- 
 tion of a man like Bayard ; and yet it might be 
 worth while to try. 
 
 There is something so much higher and more 
 delicate than our own common standards of ethics 
 that it is refining to respect, even if we fail to 
 comprehend, the struggles of a man who aspires to 
 the possession of perfect spiritual honor. 
 
 Bayard had not moved nor lifted his face from 
 his hands, when a step which he recognized 
 heavily struck and slowly mounted the lower 
 flight of the old stairs of Galilee Hall. It was 
 his uncle, Trustee of Cesarea Seminary, and of 
 the faith of its founders, returning from the home 
 of the Professor of Hebrew, where he had been 
 entertained on Anniversary week. 
 
52 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Bayard sighed, and groped for a match. This 
 interview could not be evaded, but he winced 
 away from it in every nerve. It is easier to face 
 the obloquy of the world than the frown of the 
 man or woman who has brought us up. 
 
 Hermon Worcester was bitterly mortified that 
 JEmanuel had received no " call." He had not 
 said so, yet, but his nephew knew that this well- 
 bred reserve had reached its last breath. As 
 Bayard struck the light, he perceived the forgot- 
 ten letter in his hand, and, perhaps thinking to 
 defer a painful scene for a moment, said, " Your 
 pardon, Uncle," and tore the envelope. 
 
 The letter contained a formal and unanimous 
 call from the seaside parish whose vacant pulpit 
 he had been supplying for six weeks to become 
 their pastor. 
 
 "Helen! Helen!" 
 
 The mild, cultivated whine of the Professor's 
 wife complained through the hot house. 
 
 Helen ran in dutiful response. It was late, 
 and the Anniversary guests had scattered to their 
 rooms. The girl was partly undressed for the 
 night, and stood in her doorway gathering her 
 cashmere wrapper about her tall, rich form, 
 Mrs. Carruth looked through the half-open door 
 of her own room. 
 
 " 1 cannot get your father out of his study, 
 Helen," she urged plaintively. " He has one of 
 his headaches at the base of the brain and those 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 58 
 
 extra Faculty meetings before him this week, with 
 all the rest. Do go down and see if you can't 
 send him up to bed." 
 
 Helen buttoned her white gown to the throat 
 and ran softly downstairs to the study. The Pro 
 fessor of Theology sat at his study table with a 
 knot between his eyes. A pile of catalogues lay 
 before him; he was jotting down statistics with 
 his gold pencil on old-fashioned foolscap paper. 
 He pushed the paper aside when he saw his 
 daughter, and held out his hand to her, smiling. 
 She went straight to him as if she had been a 
 little girl, and knelt beside him, crossing her 
 hands on his knee. He put his arm around her ; 
 his stern face relaxed. 
 
 " You are to put the entire system of Orthodox 
 theology away and come to bed, Papa," she said, 
 with her sweet imperiousness. " Mother says you 
 have a headache at the base of something. It is 
 pretty late and it worries her. What are you 
 doing? Counting theologues? Counting theo- 
 logues ! At your time of life ! As if you 
 couldn't find anything better to do! What is 
 this ? " She caught up a stray slip of paper, 
 " ' Deaf deaf as an adder : 10. Blind stone= 
 blind: 6.' W r hat in the name of Anniversary 
 week does that mean ? " 
 
 "That is a personal memorandum," said the 
 Professor, flushing. " Tear it up, Helen." 
 
 " 1 know," said Helen, nodding. " It 's a pri- 
 vate classification of theologues. Which does 
 
54 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 it catalogue, their theology or their intellects 1 
 Come, Papa ! " 
 
 " I '11 never tell you ! " laughed the Professor, 
 shutting his thin, scholarly lips. And he never 
 did. But the laugh had gained the point, as she 
 intended. He took his German student lamp and 
 started upstairs. Helen walked through the long, 
 dim hall with her two hands clasped lovingly 
 upon his arm. 
 
 " I am bothered," admitted the Professor, stop- 
 ping at the foot of the stairs, " about one of my 
 boys. He is rather a favorite with me. There 
 is n't a finer intellect in the senior class." 
 
 " But how about his Christianity, Father ? " 
 asked the girl mischievously. 
 
 "His Christianity is all right, so far as I 
 know," admitted the Professor slowly. " It is his 
 theology that is the hitch. He is n't sound. He 
 has received no call." 
 
 " Do I know him?" asked Helen in a different 
 tone. 
 
 The Professor of Theology turned, and held 
 his student lamp at arm's length above his daugh- 
 ter's face, which he scanned in silence before he 
 said : 
 
 "I am not prepared to answer that question, 
 Helen. Whether you know him I can't say; I 
 really cannot say whether you know him or riot, 
 I'm not sure whether I do, myself. But I am 
 much annoyed about the matter. It is a misfor- 
 tune to the Seminary, and a mortification to the 
 young man," 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 55 
 
 He kissed his daughter tenderly, and went up- 
 stairs with the weary tread of a professional man 
 at the end of a long day's work. 
 
 Helen went to her own room and shut the door. 
 But she did not light the candles. She sat down 
 at her open window, in the hot, night wind. She 
 leaned her cheek against her bare arm, from 
 which the loose sleeve fell away. The elms were 
 in such rich leaf that she could see the Seminary 
 buildings only in broken outline now. But there 
 was wind enough to lift and toss the branches, 
 and through one of the rifts in the green wall she 
 noticed that a light was burning in the third- 
 story northwest corner of Galilee Hall. 
 
 It was past midnight before she went to bed. 
 As she closed her blinds, for the first time in her 
 life, the Professor's daughter did deliberately, and 
 of self-acknowledged intention, stoop to take a 
 look at the window of a student. 
 
 " His light is still burning," she thought. 
 " What can be the matter ? " 
 
 Then she flushed red with a beautiful self- 
 rebuke, and fled to her white pillow. 
 
 Night deepened into perfect silence on Cesarea 
 Hill. The last light in Galilee Hall went out 
 The moon rode on till morning. In the deserted 
 green the clear-cut paths shone wide and long, and 
 the great white cross lay as if nailed to its place, 
 all night, between the Seminary and the Professor's 
 house. 
 
V. 
 
 " GOSHAMIGHTY, stand off there ! Who in - 
 are you ? r ' 
 
 This candid remark was addressed by a fisher- 
 man in blue flannel shirtsleeves to a gentleman in 
 afternoon dress. It was in the month of Septem- 
 ber, and the fleets were busy in and off the harbor 
 of the fishing-town. The autumn trips were well 
 under sail, and the docks and streets of Windover 
 buzzed and reeled with crews just anchored or 
 about to weigh. At the juncture of the principal 
 business avenue of the town with its principal nau- 
 tical street from a date passing the memory of 
 living citizens irreverently named Angel Alley 
 a fight was in brisk progress. This was so com- 
 mon an incident in that part of the town that the 
 residents had paid little attention to it. But the 
 stranger, being a stranger, had paused and asked 
 for a policeman. 
 
 The bystanders stared. 
 
 " There ain't none nigher 'n the station," replied 
 a girl who was watching the fight with evident 
 relish. She wore a pert sailor hat of soiled white 
 straw, set on one side of her head, and carried her 
 hands in the pockets of a crumpled tan-colored 
 reefer. Her eyes were handsome and bold. The 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 57 
 
 crowd jostled her freely, which did not seem to 
 trouble her. " There 's a fellow just arrested," 
 she explained cheerfully, " for smashing his wife 
 with a coal-hod ; they 're busy with him down to 
 the station. He fit. all the way over. It took four 
 cops to hold him. Most the folks are gone over 
 there to see the other game. This fun here won't 
 be spoiled just yet awhile." 
 
 Something in the expression with which the gen- 
 tleman regarded her attracted the girl's attention. 
 She took her hands out of her pockets, and scanned 
 him with a dull surprise ; then, with a motion which 
 one could not call abashed, but which fell short of 
 her previous ease of manner, she turned her back 
 and walked a little away towards the edge of the 
 crowd. 
 
 The fight was at its hottest. Two men, an 
 Italian laborer and an American fisherman, were 
 somewhat seriously belaboring each other, to their 
 own undisguised satisfaction and the acclamation 
 of the bystanders. Both were evidently more or 
 less drunk. An open grogshop gaped behind them. 
 Similar places of entertainment, with others less 
 easily described, lined both sides of Angel Alley, 
 multiplying fruitfully, till the wharves joined their 
 grimy hands and barred the way to this black 
 fertility. 
 
 It was a windy day ; the breeze was rising, and 
 the unseen sea could be heard moaning beyond. 
 
 Just as the stranger, with the indiscretion of 
 youth and inexperience, was about to step into the 
 
58 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 ring and try to stop the row, a child pushed 
 through the crowd. It was a boy ; a little fellow, 
 barely four or five years old. He ducked under the 
 elbows and between the legs of the spectators with 
 an adroitness which proclaimed him the son of a 
 sailor, and ran straight to the combatants, crying : 
 
 " Father ! Fa ther ! Marm says to please to 
 stop ! She says to ax you to please to stop, and 
 come home wiv you' little boy ! " 
 
 He ran between the two men, and put up his 
 little dirty fingers upon his father's big, clenched 
 hand ; he repeated piteously, " Father, Fa ther, 
 Fa ther ! " 
 
 But more than this the little fellow had not time 
 to say. The father's dark, red face turned a sud- 
 den, ominous purple, and before any person of them 
 all could stay him his brutal hand had turned upon 
 the child. 
 
 Cries of shame and horror rose from the crowd ; 
 a woman's shriek echoed from a window across the 
 street, and the screams of the boy pierced the bed- 
 lam. The Italian, partly sobered, had slunk back. 
 
 " Stop him ! Part them ! Hold him, somebody ! 
 He '11 kill the child ! " yelled the bystanders, and 
 not a man of them stirred. 
 
 " Why, it 's only a l>dby ! " cried the girl in the 
 reefer, running up. " He '11 murder it ! Oh, if I 
 was a man ! " she raved, wringing her hands. 
 
 At that moment, before one could have lifted 
 the eyelash to see how it fell, a well-aimed blow 
 struck the brute beneath the ear. He fell. 
 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 59 
 
 Hands snatched the writhing child away ; his 
 mother's arms and screams received him; and 
 over the fallen man a slight, tall figure was seen 
 to tower. The stranger had thrown down his 
 valise, and tossed off his silk hat. His delicate 
 face was as white as a star. He quivered with 
 holy rage. He trampled on the fellow with one 
 foot, and ground him down; he had the attitude 
 of the St. Michael in Guide's great picture. He 
 had that scorn and all that beauty. 
 
 A geyser of oaths spurted from the prostrate 
 ruffian. The stranger stooped, and pinned him 
 skillfully until they ceased. 
 
 "Now," he said calmly, "get up. Get up, I 
 say ! " He released his clenched white hand from 
 the other's grimy flesh. 
 
 " He '11 thresh the life outen ye ! " protested a 
 voice from the increasing crowd. "You don't 
 know Job Slip 's well 's we do. He '11 make short 
 work on ye, sir, if you darst let go him." 
 
 "No, he won't," replied the stranger quietly. 
 " He respects a good blow when he feels it. He 
 knows how ft ought to be planted. He would do 
 as much himself, if he saw a man killing his own 
 child. Would n't you, Job Slip ? " 
 
 He stepped back fearlessly and folded his arms. 
 The rapidly sobering sot struggled to his feet, and 
 instinctively squared off; looked at the gentleman 
 blindly for a moment, then dropped his huge arms. 
 
 " Goshamighty / " he said, "who in are 
 
 you ? " 
 
60 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 He took one of the stranger's delicate hands in 
 his black and bleeding palms, and critically ex- 
 amined it. 
 
 " That? Why, my woman's paw is stronger 
 'n' bigger 'n that ! " contemptuously. " And you 
 did n't overdo it neither. Pity ! If you 'd only 
 made it manslaughter why, I could ha' sent ye 
 up on my antumortim deppysition." 
 
 " Oh, I knew better than that," replied the 
 stranger calmly, turning for his hat. He thought 
 of the boxing-lessons that he used to take on the 
 Back Bay, years ago. Some one in the crowd 
 brushed off the hat with the back of a dusty elbow, 
 and handed it respectfully to the gentleman. The 
 girl in the reefer picked up his valise. 
 
 " I 've kep' my eye on it, for you," she said in a 
 softened voice. 
 
 "Well," said Job Slip slowly, "I guess 7'U 
 keep my eye on him." 
 
 "Do!" answered the stranger heartily. "I 
 wish you would. They don't fight where I 'm 
 going." 
 
 " Who be you, anyway ? " demanded Job Slip 
 with undisguised admiration. He had not made 
 up his mind yet whether to spring at the other's 
 throat, or to offer him a drink. 
 
 " I 'm in too much of a hurry to tell you now," 
 answered the gentleman quietly. " I 've missed 
 the most important engagement of my life to 
 save your child." 
 
 "He's goin' to his weddin'," muttered a voice 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 61 
 
 behind him. The girl started the chorus of a song 
 which he had never heard before, and was not 
 anxious to hear again. 
 
 "You have a good voice," he said, turning. 
 " You can put it to a better use than that." 
 
 She stared at him, but made him no reply. The 
 crowd parted and scattered, and he came through 
 into the main street. 
 
 " Sir ! Sir ! " called a woman's voice from a 
 window over his head. 
 
 The young man looked up. The mother of the 
 little boy held the child upon the window-sill for 
 him to see. 
 
 " He ain't much hurt ! " she cried. " I thought 
 you 'd like to know it. It 's all along of you. 
 God go with you, sir ! God bless you, sir ! " 
 
 He had put on his hat, but removed it at these 
 words, and stood uncovered before the drunkard's 
 wife. She could not know how much it meant to 
 him that day. Without looking back he strode 
 up the street. The Italian ran out and watched 
 him. Job Slip hesitated for a moment ; then 
 he did the same, following the young man with 
 perplexed and sodden eyes. The Italian stood 
 amiably beside his late antagonist. Both men 
 had forgotten what they fought about, now. A 
 little group from the vanishing crowd joined them. 
 The mother in the window a gaunt Madonna 
 shaded her eyes with her hand to see the de- 
 parting figure of the unknown while she pressed 
 the bruised and sobbing child against her breast. 
 
62 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 The stranger halted at the steps of the old First 
 Church of Windover ; then ran up lightly, and 
 disappeared within the open doors. 
 
 " I '11 be split and salted ! " said a young man 
 who had not been drinking, " if I don't believe 
 that's the new parson come to town! " 
 
 The speaker had black eyebrows which met in a 
 straight and heavy line. 
 
 "I'll be !" said Job Slip. 
 
 The church was thronged. Citizens and stran- 
 gers jostled each other in the porch, the vestibules, 
 and the aisles. It was one of those religious 
 festivals so dear to the heart of New England, 
 and so perplexing to gayer people. No metropol- 
 itan play could have collected a crowd like this in 
 Windover. 
 
 The respectability of the town was out in force. 
 The richest fish firms, the largest ship-owners, and 
 the oldest families shed the little light of local 
 glory upon the occasion. Most of them, in fact, 
 were members of the parish. Windover had what 
 an irreverent outsider had termed her codocracy. 
 The examination to be followed that evening by 
 the ordination of the new minister was an affair 
 of note. Windover is not the only town on the 
 map where the social leaders are fond of patroniz- 
 ing whatever ecclesiastical interests are dependent 
 on the generosity of their pockets and the impor- 
 tance of their names. Nothing tends to the growth 
 of a religious sect so much as the belief that the 
 individual is important to it. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 63 
 
 Upon the platform, decorated by the Ladies' 
 Aid Society with taste, piety, and goldenrod, sat 
 the Council called to examine and to ordain Eman- 
 uel Bayard to the ministry of Christ. These were 
 venerable men ; they drove in from the surround- 
 ing parishes in their buggies, or took the trains 
 from remoter towns. A few city names had re- 
 sponded ; one or two of them were eminent. The 
 columns of the " Windover Topsail " had these 
 already set up in display type, and the reporters 
 in the galleries dashed them off on yellow slips of 
 paper. 
 
 As the minister-elect, panting with his haste, 
 ran up the steps and into the church, the first 
 thing that he perceived was the eye of one of his 
 Cesarea Professors fastened sternly upon him. It 
 gave him the feeling of a naughty little boy who 
 was late to school. This guilty sensation was not 
 lessened by a vision of the back of his uncle's bald 
 head in an eminent seat among the lay delegates, 
 and by the sight of the jeweled Swiss repeater, 
 familiar to his infancy, too visibly suspended from 
 Mr. Hermon Worcester's hand. The church 
 clock (wearing for the occasion a wreath of purple 
 asters, which had received an unfortunate lurch 
 to one side, and gave that pious timepiece a tipsy 
 air) charitably maintained that Bayard was but 
 seven minutes late. The impatience of the Coun- 
 cil and the anxiety of the audience seemed to aver 
 that an hour would not cover, nor eternity pardon, 
 the young man's delay. He dropped his valise 
 
64 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 into the hand of the sexton, and strode up the 
 broad aisle. The dust of the street fight still 
 showed upon his fashionable clothes. His cheeks 
 were flushed with his fine color. His disordered 
 hair clung to his white forehead in curls that the 
 straitest sect of the Pharisees could not have 
 straightened. Every woman in the audience 
 noticed this, and liked him the better for it. But 
 the Council was composed of straight-haired men. 
 
 Somebody beckoned him into the minister's 
 room to repair damages : and as he crossed the 
 platform to do so, Bayard stooped and exchanged 
 a few whispered words with the moderator. The 
 wrinkled face of that gentleman changed visibly. 
 He rose at once and said : 
 
 " It is due to our brother and to the audience to 
 state that your minister-elect desires me to make 
 his apologies to this parish for a tardiness which 
 he found to be unavoidable, morally unavoida- 
 ble, I might say. And I should observe," added 
 the moderator, hesitating, " that I have been re- 
 quested not to explain the nature of the case, but 
 I shall take it upon myself to defy this injunction, 
 and to state that an act of Christian mercy de- 
 tained our brother. I do not think," said the 
 moderator, dropping suddenly from the ecclesias- 
 tical to the human tone, " that it is every man who 
 would have done it, under the circumstances ; and 
 I do not consider it any less creditable for that." 
 
 A sound of relief stirred through the house as 
 the moderator sat down. The audience ceased 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 65 
 
 twisting its head to look at the tipsy clock, thus 
 enabling the Ladies' Aid Association to get that 
 aster wreath for the first time out of mind. Mr. 
 Hermon Worcester's watch went back to its com- 
 fortable fob. A smile melted across the anxious 
 face of Professor Haggai Carruth of Cesarea. 
 The minister-elect reappeared with plumage prop- 
 erly smoothed, and the proceedings of the day set 
 in, with the usual decorum of the denomination. 
 
 It is not a ceremonious sect, that of the Congre- 
 gationalism of New England ; and its polity allows 
 much diversity upon occasions like these, whose 
 programme depends a good deal upon the prefer- 
 ence of the moderator. Bayard's moderator was 
 a gray-haired, kind-hearted, plain country minister, 
 the oldest man in the Council, and one of the 
 best. It was not his intention to subject the 
 young man to one of the ecclesiastical roastings at 
 that time in vogue, and for the course of events 
 which followed he was not responsible. This was 
 a matter of small moment at the time ; but 
 Bayard had afterwards occasion to remember it. 
 
 He listened dreamily to the conventional pre- 
 liminary exercises of the afternoon. His mind 
 was in a turmoil which poorly prepared the young 
 man for the intellectual and emotional strain of 
 the day. That scene in the street flashed and 
 faded and reappeared before him, like the dark 
 lantern which an evil hand brings into a sacred 
 place. The blow of the man's fist upon the child 
 seemed to fall crashing upon his own flesh. 
 
66 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Across the crescendo of the chorus of the hymn 
 the cry of the little boy ran in piteous discord. 
 The organ rolled up the oaths of the wharves. 
 While the good, gray-haired moderator was pray- 
 ing, Bayard was shocked to find that the song 
 of the street girl ran through his burning brain. 
 The gaunt Madonna in the window of the drunk- 
 ard's home seemed to be stamped a dark photo- 
 graphic letter-head upon the license to preach 
 the Christian religion which he was required 
 (with moore than usual precision) to produce. 
 
 " Why!," said a sour voice suddenly at his el- 
 bow, " why do you consider yourself a child of 
 God?" 
 
 Bayard recalled himself with a start to the fact 
 that the personal examination of the day had be- 
 gun, and that the opening shot had come from 
 the least important and most crabbed man in the 
 Council. And now for three quivering hours the 
 young man stood the fire of the most ingenious 
 ecclesiastical inquisition which had been witnessed 
 in that part of the State for many a year. 
 
 At first it rather amused him than otherwise, 
 and he bore it with great good nature. 
 
 He was patient beyond his years with the small 
 clergyman from the small interior parish, whose 
 hobby was that theological students were not 
 properly taught their Bibles, and who had in- 
 vented a precious catechism of his own, calcu- 
 lated to prove to the audience how little they or 
 the candidate knew of Boanerges, Gog and Ma- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 67 
 
 gog, and the four beasts which are the chief zo- 
 ological ornaments of the Apocalypse. Having 
 treated these burning questions satisfactorily. 
 Bayard fenced awhile with the learned clergyman 
 who was alive only in the dead languages, and who 
 put the candidate through his Greek and Hebrew 
 paces as if he had been a college boy. 
 
 Bayard had felt no serious concern as to the 
 outcome of the examination, a mere form, a husk, 
 a shell, with which it was not worth a man's while 
 to quarrel. The people of the church he had 
 already begun to call them his people were en- 
 thusiastically and lovingly pledged to him. He 
 smiled into their familiar faces over the heads of 
 his inquisitors, and manfully and cheerfully stood 
 his ground. All, in fact, went well enough, until 
 the theology of the young man came under inves- 
 tigation. Then a cloud no bigger than a man's 
 tongue, if one may say so, appeared to darken the 
 interior of Windover First Church. The oldest 
 and deafest men in the Council pricked up their 
 ears. The youngest and best-natured grew un- 
 easy. The candidate's people looked at him anx- 
 iously. His uncle flushed ; Professor Carruth 
 coughed sternly. The moderator ruled and over- 
 ruled, and tried with troubled kindness to quench 
 the warming flame of ecclesiastical censure in 
 which many a bright, devout young life goes out. 
 
 Suddenly Bayard awoke to the fact that the 
 smoke was curling in the fagots at his feet ; that 
 the stake was at his back, the chains upon his 
 
68 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 hands ; that he was in danger of being precon- 
 demned for heresy in the hearts of those gray old 
 men, his elder brothers in the church, and dis- 
 graced before the eyes of the people who had loved 
 and chosen him. 
 
 The house was now so full and so still that a 
 sigh could be heard ; and when a group from the 
 street pushed noisily in, and stood by the entrance, 
 impatient expressions leaped from pew to pew. 
 Bayard looked up at the disturbance. There by 
 the green baize doors stood the Italian, Job Slip, 
 and the young fellow (with the eyebrows) who 
 did not drink, two or three other spectators of the 
 fight, and the girl in the reefer. An uninvited 
 delegation from Angel Alley, these children of 
 the devil had crept among those godly men and 
 women, and stared about. 
 
 " A circumstance," complained Mr. Hermon 
 Worcester afterwards to Professor Carruth, 
 " which might not happen on such an occasion in 
 our [New England churches once in twenty years." 
 
 Bayard had been singularly gentle and patient 
 with his tormentors up to this moment. But now 
 he gathered himself, and fought for his life like a 
 man. Brand after brand, the inventions of the- 
 ology were flung hissing upon him. 
 
 Did he believe that heathen, unacquainted with 
 Christ, were saved? 
 
 What did he hold became of the souls of those 
 who died in infancy ? 
 
 If they happened to be born dead, what was 
 their fate ? 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 69 
 
 Explain his views on the doctrine of Justifica- 
 tion by Faith. 
 
 State explicitly his conception of the Trinity 
 Had none ? Ah ah ! 
 
 Were the three Persons in the Trinity separate 
 as qualities or as natures ? Did not know ? Ah 
 aii. 
 
 State the precise nature, province, and character 
 of each Person. Did not feel qualified to do so ? 
 Ha hum. 
 
 What was the difference between Arianism and 
 Socimanism ? 
 
 Did the Son exist coordinate with, and yet sub- 
 ordinate to the Father ? 
 
 What is the distinction between the attributes 
 and the faculties of the Deity ? 
 
 Did an impenitent person ever pray ? 
 
 Describe the doctrine of Free Will. 
 
 Is a sinner ever able to repent, of his own 
 choice ? 
 
 Is he punished for not being able to do so ? 
 
 Is the human race responsible for the guilt oi 
 Adam ? 
 
 Why not? 
 
 Explain the process of sanctification, and the 
 exact province of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Carefully elucidate your views on Total Deprav= 
 
 Sty. 
 
 Could a man did we understand you ? be- 
 3ome regenerate without waiting for the compelling 
 action of the Holy Spirit ? 
 
70 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Is there any Scriptural ground for belief in the 
 possibility of a second probation ? What ? Please 
 repeat that reply. 
 
 Did not the first sin of a child justly expose 
 him to eternal punishment ? What ? 
 
 At this point in the trial, Bayard was acutely 
 conscious of the controlled voice of Professor 
 Carruth, who had asked no question up to that 
 moment. Dear old Professor ! he was trying to 
 haul his favorite student out of the fire before it 
 was too late. 
 
 " But," he asked gently, " is not one act of sin 
 an infinite wrong?" 
 
 " I believe it is ; or it may reasonably become 
 so." 
 
 " Is it not a wrong committed against an Infi- 
 nite Being ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, it is." 
 
 " Does not an infinite wrong committed against 
 an Infinite Being deserve an infinite punish- 
 ment ? " pleaded the Professor of Theology. 
 
 " You have taught me so, sir." 
 
 A rustle swept the house. The stern face of 
 the Professor melted in its sudden, winning fash- 
 ion. He drew in his breath. At least, the 
 reputation of the Department was secured ! 
 
 " Do you not believe what you have been 
 taught ? " 
 
 " Professor," said Bayard, smiling, " do you ? " 
 
 It being well known that the now conservative 
 Professor of Theology had been the liberal and 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 7l 
 
 the progressive of his first youth, this reply cre- 
 ated a slight smile. But the Professor did not 
 smile. The crisis was too serious. 
 
 " The candidate does not deny the doctrine," 
 he urged. " He will undoubtedly grow into it as 
 other men have done before him." 
 
 " Whether men are eternally damned " began 
 Bayard. 
 
 " Job," whispered the Italian back by the door, 
 " he swear at 'em ! " 
 
 " No, he ain't," said the sober fellow. " It 's 
 the way they talk in churches." 
 
 " What tongue is it they do speak ? " persisted 
 the Italian. 
 
 " Blamed if I know," whispered Job Slip with 
 unusual decorum. " I think it 's High Dutch." 
 
 44 No, it ain't ; it 's Latin," corrected the sober 
 fellow. " I can make out a word now and then. 
 They translate parts as they go along. It 's darn 
 queer gibberish, ain't it ? I guess the natives 
 used to talk like that in Bible times." 
 
 " All this row," said Job Slip, whose befuddled 
 brain was actively busy with the personal fate of 
 a minister who could knock him down, " all this 
 
 d row 's along of me. It 's because he was 
 
 late to meetin ! " 
 
 The Italian nodded seriously. But the girl in 
 the reefer said : 
 
 u Shut up there ! The second round 's on, 
 now." 
 
 " Explain the difference between verbal and 
 
72 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 plenary inspiration," demanded the small clergy- 
 man in a small, suspicious voice. 
 
 " There ! I said it was High Dutch ! " whis 
 pered Job Slip triumphantly. 
 
 " Explain the difference," repeated the small 
 clergyman. 
 
 The candidate explained. 
 
 " Is every word of the Old and New Testament 
 of the Scriptures equally inspired by Almighty 
 God?" 
 
 " Please give me your definition of inspiration," 
 said Bayard, wheeling upon his questioner. 
 
 The small clergyman objected that this was the 
 candidate's business. 
 
 " It is one of the maxims of civil law that defi- 
 nitions are dangerous," replied Bayard with a 
 smile. But it was no time for smiling, and he 
 knew it. He parried for a little in the usual 
 technicalities of the schools ; but it was without 
 hope or interest. He knew now how it would all 
 end. But he was not conscious of a moment's 
 hesitation. His soul seemed elate, remote from 
 his fate. He looked out across the lake of faces 
 upturned to his. He had now grown quite pale, 
 and the natural fairness of his skin and delicacy 
 of his features added to the effect of transparence 
 which his high face gave. The -dullest eye in the 
 audience observed, and the coldest lip long after- 
 wards acknowledged, the remarkable beauty of 
 the man. With a sudden and impressive gesture 
 of the hand, as if he cast the whole merciless 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 73 
 
 scene away from him, he stepped unexpectedly 
 forward, and in a ringing voice he said : - 
 
 " Fathers and brothers of the church ! I believe 
 in God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I 
 believe in Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord and 
 Saviour. I believe in the sacredness and authority 
 of the Bible, which contains the lesson and the his- 
 tory of His life. I believe in ihe guilt and the 
 misery of sin, and I have spent the best years of 
 my youth in your institutions of sacred learning, 
 seeking to be taught how to teach my fellow-men 
 to be better. I solemnly believe in the Life Eter- 
 nal, and that its happiness and holiness are the 
 gifts of Jesus Christ to the race ; or to such of us 
 as prove fit survivors, capable of immortality. I 
 do not presume to explain how or why this is or 
 may be so ; for behold we are shown mysteries, of 
 which this is one. If I am permitted to guide the 
 people who have loved and chosen me, I expect to 
 teach them many truths which I do not under- 
 stand. I shall teach them none which I do not 
 believe. Fathers and brothers, I show you my 
 soul ! Deal with me as you will ! " 
 
 He stood for a space, tall, white, still, with that 
 look half angel, half human which was pecul- 
 iar to his face in moments of exaltation. His 
 dazzling eyes blazed for an instant upon his tor- 
 mentors, then fell upon his people and grew dim. 
 He saw their uplifted faces pleadingly turned to 
 him : troubled men whom he had been able to 
 guide ; bereaved women whom he had known how 
 
74 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 to comfort. Oh, his people ! Tears were on their 
 cheeks. Their faces swam before him. How 
 dear, in those few months that he had served 
 them, they had grown ! To stand disgraced before 
 them, a stigma on his Christian name forever, 
 their faith deceived, their trust disappointed, his 
 people, to be his no more ! 
 
 " God ! " he said in his heart. " Was there any 
 other way ? " 
 
 An instant's darkness swept over him, and his 
 soul staggered in it. Then, to the fine, inner ear 
 of the spirit the answer came : 
 
 " In honor, between Me and thee, thou hast no 
 other way." 
 
 The troubled voice of the moderator now re- 
 called him, using the quaint phrase of elder times 
 for such occasion made and provided : " The Coun- 
 cil will now be by themselves." 
 
 In three quarters of an hour the Council returned 
 and .reported upon the examination. Emanuel 
 Bayard was refused ordination to the Christian 
 ministry by a majority of five. 
 
 Now, the savage that lurks in the gentlest as- 
 semblage of men sprang with a war-cry upon the 
 decorum of the crowded church. Agitated beyond 
 self-control, the people split into factions, and re- 
 solved themselves into committees ; they wept, 
 they quarreled, they prayed, and they condemned 
 by turns. The gray -haired moderator and the de- 
 jected Professor, themselves paler than the rejected 
 candidate, sought to convert the confusion into 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 75 
 
 something like order wherewith to close the exer- 
 cises of that miserable day. During the momen- 
 tary silence which their united efforts had enforced^ 
 a thick voice from the swaying crowd was dis- 
 tinctly heard. 
 
 Job Slip, who had somehow managed to take an 
 extra drop from his pocket bottle during the 
 electric disturbance of the last half hour, was stag- 
 gering up the broad aisle, with the Italian and the 
 sober man at either elbow. 
 
 " Lemme go ! " cried Job, with an air of un- 
 precedented politeness. "Lemme get up thar 
 
 whar I ken make a speech. D ye, I won't 
 
 cuss ye, for this is a meetin'-house, but I will make 
 my speech ! " 
 
 " Hush, Job ! " said the girl in the sailor hat. 
 She came forward before all the people and laid 
 her hand upon the drunkard's arm. " Hush, Job, 
 hush! You bother the minister. Come away, 
 Job, come away. Mari 's here, and the young 
 one. Come along to your wife, Job Slip ! " 
 
 " I '11 join my wife when I get ready," said Job 
 solemnly, " for it 's proper that I should ; but I 
 ain't a-goin' to stand by an' see a man that licked 
 me licked out'n his rights an' not do nothin' for 
 him ! No, sir ! Gentlemen," cried Job pleasantly, 
 assuming an oratorical attitude and facing round 
 upon the disturbed house, " I '11 stick up for the 
 minister every time. It ain't his fault he was late 
 to meetin'. You had n't oughter kick him out for 
 that, now ! It 's all along of me, gentlemen ! I 
 
76 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 drink and he ye see don't. I was threshin 1 
 the life out'n my little boy down to Angel Alley, 
 and he knocked me down for 't. Fact, sir ! That 
 there little minister, he knocked me down. I '11 
 stand by him every round now, you bet! 7 '11 
 see 't he gets his rights in his own meetin'-house ! ' 
 
 Half a dozen hands were at Job's mouth ; a dozen 
 more dragged him back. The Council sprang to 
 their feet in horror. But Job squared off, and 
 eyed these venerable Christians with the moral 
 superiority of his condition. He pushed on towards 
 the pulpit. 
 
 " Come on, Tony ! " he cried to the Italian. 
 " Come, Ben ! You, Lena ! " He beckoned to 
 the girl, who had shrunk back. " Tell Mari an' 
 Joey to f oiler on ! Won't hear us, won't they ? 
 Well, we '11 see ! There ain't a cove of the lot of 
 them could knock me down ! Jest to save a little 
 f ellar's bones ! Gentlemen ! look a' here. Look 
 at us. We 're the delegation from Angel Alley, 
 Sir, Now, sir, what are you pious a-goin' to do 
 with us ? " 
 
 But a white, firm hand was laid upon Job's 
 shoulder. Pale, shining, frowning, Bayard stood 
 beside him. 
 
 " Come, Job," he said gently, " come out with 
 me, and we will talk it over." 
 
 The broad aisle quickly cleared, and the rejected 
 minister left the church with the drunkard's hand 
 upon his arm. The remainder of the delegation 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 77 
 
 from Angel Alley followed quietly, and the soft, 
 green baize doors closed upon them. 
 
 "Say," said Job Slip, recovering a portion of 
 his scattered senses in the open air, " say, I 
 thought you said they did -n't fight where you was 
 goin'?" 
 
 The drunkard's wife stood outside. She was 
 crying. Bayard looked at her. He did not know 
 what to say. Just then he felt a tug at the tail of 
 his coat, and small, warm fingers crept into his 
 cold hand. He looked down. It was the little 
 boy. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE real crises of life are those that the stories 
 leave untold. It is not the sudden blow, but the 
 learning how to bear the bruise afterwards, that 
 constitutes experience ; not the delirium of fever, 
 but the weariness of convalescence. What does 
 one do the Monday morning after the funeral? 
 How does one meet the grocery bills when the 
 property is gone ? How does a man act when his 
 reputation is ruined by the span of an afternoon ? 
 Fiction does not tell us, but fact omits nothing of 
 the grim details ; spares not the least stroke of 
 that black perplexity which, next to the insecurity 
 of life, is the hardest thing about it. 
 
 You men of affairs, give a moment's manly sym- 
 pathv to the position of a young fellow like your- 
 selves, halting just over the line between education 
 and a life's work, trained for a calling which the 
 worldliest soul among you respects as nobler and 
 higher than your own, tripped at the outset by one 
 of its lower and more ignoble accidents ; a man 
 who will not lie to God or his own soul, who has 
 scorned the consequences of being simply true, 
 but must bear them for all that, like other men. 
 For the holiest dedications in this world suffer the 
 taint thereof ; and it is at once the saddest and the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 79 
 
 healthiest thing about the work of a man of God 
 that it is subject to market laws, to fashion, to 
 prejudice, to envy, and to poor judgment, like 
 other work. 
 
 It seems a little thing to write about, but at the 
 time it was not the least aspect of the great crisis 
 into which Emanuel Bayard had arrived, that, 
 when he came out into the strong, salt breeze of 
 Windover that afternoon, it suddenly occurred to 
 the heretic minister that he had nowhere to spend 
 the night. Alas for the bright and solemn festival 
 in which his should have been the crowned hero's 
 part ! He heard the excited women of the parish 
 asking each other : 
 
 " Who is going to eat up that collation?" 
 
 " What is ever going to become of all that one- 
 two-three-four cake ? " 
 
 " Feed those old ministers now ? Not a sand- 
 wich ! Let 'em go home where they belong. If 
 we 're going to have no minister, they shall have 
 no supper ! We '11 settle him in spite of 'em ! " 
 
 Thus the Ladies' Aid Association, with flushed 
 cheeks and shrill voices. But the deacons and 
 the pillars of the disturbed church collected in 
 serious groups, and discussed the catastrophe with 
 the dignity of the voting and governing sex. 
 
 Sick at heart, and longing to escape from the 
 whole miserable scene, Bayard walked down the 
 street alone. His steps bent blindly to the sta- 
 tion. When he had bought his ticket to Boston, 
 it came to him for the first time to ask himself 
 
80 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 where he was going. Home ? What home ? 
 Whose? Hermon Worcester's? That glance at 
 his uncle's rigid face which he had allowed him- 
 self back there in the church recurred to him. 
 The incensed and disappointed man had suffered 
 his smitten boy to go forth from that furnace 
 without a sign of sympathy. He had given Eman- 
 uel one look : the pupils of his eyes were dark 
 and dilated with indignation of the kind that a 
 gentleman does not trust himself to express. 
 
 " 1 cannot go home," said Emanuel suddenly, 
 half aloud. " I forgot that. I shall not be 
 wanted." 
 
 He put his ticket in his wallet and turned 
 away. Some people were hurrying into the sta- 
 tion, and he strode to a side door to escape them. 
 The handsome knob of an Oriental grapestick 
 touched his arm. The white face of the Professor 
 of Theology looked sternly into his. 
 
 " Suppose you come out to Cesarea with me to- 
 night ? We can talk this unfortunate affair over 
 quietly, and I am sure you misapprehend the 
 real drift of some of these doctrines that disturb 
 you. I believe I could set you right, and possi- 
 bly another examination before a different 
 Council " 
 
 Bayard's head swam for an instant. A girl 
 in a muslin dress stood at the meeting of the 
 arms of the great cross in the Seminary lawn. It 
 was moonlight, and it was June, and this dreadful 
 thing had never happened. He was in that state 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 81 
 
 when a woman's sympathy is the only one delicate 
 enough for a man's bruised nature to bear. He 
 quivered at the thought of being touched by any- 
 thing harsher than the compassionate approval, 
 the indignant sorrow, the intelligent heart 
 
 " No," he said, after a scarcely perceptible hesi- 
 tation. " Thank you, Professor I can't do it. 
 I should only disappoint you. I am almost too 
 tired to go all over the ground again. Good-by, 
 Professor." 
 
 He held out his hand timidly. The thin, high- 
 veined hand of the Professor shook as he re- 
 sponded to the grasp. 
 
 " I did n't know," he said more gently, " but 
 you would be more comfortable. Your uncle " 
 the Professor hesitated. 
 
 " Thank you," said the young man again. 
 "That was thoughtful in you. If your theology 
 were half as tender as your heart, Professor ! " 
 added the poor fellow, trying to smile with the old 
 audacity of Professor Carruth's pet student. 
 But he shook his head, and pushed out of the 
 door into the street. 
 
 There he stood irresolute. What next? He 
 was to have been the guest of the treasurer of the 
 church that night, after the ordination. It was a 
 pretty, luxurious home ; he had been entertained 
 there so often that he felt at home in it ; the 
 family had been his affectionate friends, and the 
 children were fond of him. He thought of that 
 comfortable guest-room with the weakest pang 
 
82 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 that he had known yet : he felt ill enough to go to 
 bed. But they had not asked the dishonored 
 minister, now, to be their guest. It did not occur 
 to hinio so sore at heart was he, that he had given 
 them no opportunity. 
 
 He was about to return to the station, with a 
 vague purpose to seek shelter in some hotel in a 
 village where nobody knew him, when a plain, 
 elderly woman dressed in black approached him. 
 He recognized her a% one of the obscurer people of 
 his lost parish. She had been comforted by some- 
 thing he had said one Sunday; she had come 
 timidly to tell him so, after the fashion of such 
 women ; she had known trouble, he remembered, 
 and poverty, it was clear. 
 
 " Ah, Mrs. Granite ! " he said pathetically. " Did 
 you take all the trouble to come to say good-by to 
 me?" 
 
 " You look so tired, sir ! " sobbed Mrs. Granite. 
 " You look down sick abed ! We thought you 
 was n't fit to travel to-night, sir, and if you 
 wouldn't mind coming home with us to get a 
 night's rest, Mr. Bayard ? We live very poor, sir, 
 not like you ; but me and my girl, we could n't 
 bear to see you going off so ! We 'd take it for an 
 honor, Mr. Bayard, sir ! " 
 
 "I will come," said the weary man. And he 
 went, at once. Certain words confusedly recurred 
 to him as he walked silently beside Mrs. Granite, 
 " He had not where," they ran, " He had not 
 where to lay his head." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 83 
 
 The light burned late in the clean, spare room in 
 the cottage of the fisherman's widow on Windover 
 Point that night. 
 
 Early in the morning her mother sent Jane 
 Granite running for the doctor; and by night 
 it was well known in Windover that the new 
 minister was ill. He was threatened with some- 
 thing with a Latin name ; not epidemic in Wind- 
 over, whose prevailing diseases are measles and 
 alcoholism. Mrs. Granite found the minister's 
 anticipated malady hard to pronounce ; but Jane, 
 who had been at the high school, called it menin- 
 gitis. 
 
 But here again fact dealt with Emanuel Bayard 
 as no respectable fiction could be expected to. An 
 interesting delirium or deadly fever might have 
 changed the whole course of his life. Had he 
 fallen then and there a martyr to his fate, the 
 sympathy of the town, the interest of the denom- 
 ination, the affection of his lost parish, the peni- 
 tent anxiety of Mr. Hermon Worcester, would 
 how easily ! have marked out his future for him 
 in flower-beds that seemed forsooth to be the vine- 
 yard of the. Lord; and he might have done a deal 
 of pleasant hoeing and trimming there, like other 
 men, till harvest time. But floriculture is small 
 pastime for the sinew elected to cut thickets and 
 to blaze forests ; and he arose to tear and bleed 
 at his self -chosen brambles as God decreed. 
 
 He had not meningitis ; he suffered no mortal 
 malady ; he did but lie helpless for two weeks 
 
84 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 under one of those serious nsrvous collapses which 
 seem ignominy to a young man. During these 
 critical days his people elect and lost had plenty 
 of time to quarrel over him, or to send him currant 
 jelly. And the wife of the treasurer was reported 
 to have said that he ought to be in her house. But 
 Mrs. Granite and Jane nursed him adoringly, and 
 as soon as the doctor permitted, Jane brought the 
 patient his mail. It contained a curt but civil 
 letter from his uncle, regretting to learn that he 
 had been indisposed, and requesting an interview. 
 
 As soon as he was able to travel, Emanuel went 
 to Boston. 
 
 An unexpected incident which happened on the 
 morning that he left Windover gave back some- 
 thing of the natural fire to his eyes, and he looked 
 less ill than Mr. Worcester had expected, when 
 they met in the library on Beacon Street. 
 
 This circumstance checked the slightly rising 
 tide of sympathy in his uncle's feeling ; and it 
 was with scarcely more than civility that the elder 
 man opened the conversation. 
 
 " I wish to discuss this situation with you, 
 Emanuel, once for all. You have for some time 
 avoided the issue between us which is bound to 
 come." 
 
 " I have avoided nothing," interrupted Emanuel 
 proudly. 
 
 14 It is the same thing. You have never met 
 me halfway. The time has come when we must 
 have it out. You know, of course, perfectly well 
 
A SINGULAR { LIFE. 85 
 
 vvhat a blow this thing has been to me the mor- 
 tification the ... After all I have done foa 
 you"- 
 
 The cold, clear-cut features of Hermon Wor- 
 cester's face became suffused; he put his hand 
 against his heart, and gasped. For the first time 
 it occurred to the young man that the elder, too, 
 had suffered ; with a quick exclamation of sym- 
 pathy or anxiety, he turned to reply, but Mr. 
 Worcester got to his feet, and began to pace the 
 library hotly. 
 
 " What do you propose to do ? " he cried. 
 " Seven years of higher education, and how 
 many trips to Europe? And all the that 
 feeling a man has for a child he has brought up 
 wasted, worse than wasted ! What do you 
 propose to do? Thirty years old, and a failure 
 at the start ! A disgrace to the faith of your 
 fathers ! A blot on an old religious name ! 
 Come, now ! what next ? . . . I suppose 1 could 
 find you a place to sweep a store," added Hermon 
 Worcester bitingly. 
 
 Emanuel had flushed darkly, and then his swift 
 pallor came on. 
 
 " Uncle," he said distinctly, " I think this in- 
 terview we have been preparing for so long may 
 as well be dispensed with. It seems to me quite 
 useless. I can only grieve you, sir ; and you can- 
 not comfort me." 
 
 " Comfort ! " sneered the other, with his least 
 agreeable expression ; for Hermon Worcester had 
 many, in frequent use. 
 
86 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 "Well," said Emanuel, "yes. There are times 
 when even a heretic may need something of that 
 sort. But I was about to say that I think it idle 
 for us to talk. My plans are now quite formed." 
 
 " Indeed, sir ! " said Mr. Worcester, stopping 
 short. 
 
 " I have been invited by a minority of my 
 people to start a new work in Windover, of which 
 they propose that I shall become the leader." 
 
 " Not the pastor ! " observed Mr. Worcester. 
 
 " Yes, the pastor, that was the word. It will 
 be a work quite independent of the old church." 
 
 " And of the old faith, eh ? " 
 
 " Of the old traditions, some of them," replied 
 Emanuel gently ; " not of the old truth, I hope. 
 I cannot hope for your sympathy in this step. I 
 have decided to take it. It strikes me, Uncle, 
 that we had better not discuss the matter." 
 
 " His mother before him ! " cried Hermon Wor- 
 cester, violently striding up and down the velvet 
 carpet of the library, " I went through it with his 
 mother before him, this abhorrent indifference 
 to the demands of birth and training, this scandal, 
 this withdrawal from the world, this publicity 
 given to family differences, the whole miserable 
 business ! She for love, and you for I suppose 
 you call it religion ! I can't go through it again, 
 and I won't ! It is asking too much of me ! " 
 
 " I ask nothing of you, Uncle," said the young 
 man, rising. 
 
 " You '11 end in infidelity, sir. You will be an 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. . 87 
 
 agnostic in a year's time. You'll be preaching 
 positivism ! I will have nothing to do with it ! 
 I warned you before, Manuel, back there in 
 Cesarea. I am forced to repeat myself. Under 
 the circumstances, you will not expect a dollar 
 from me. I would as soon leave my property to 
 an atheist club as to you, and your second proba- 
 tions, and your uninspired Bibles ! " 
 
 Mr. Worcester snapped in the private drawer 
 of his desk, and locked it with unnecessary force 
 and symbolism. 
 
 " I don't forbid you my house, mind. I sha'n't 
 turn you into the street. You '11 starve into your 
 senses fast enough on any salary that the rabble 
 down in that fishing-town can raise for you. 
 When you do come back to me. Keep your 
 latch-key in your pocket. You will want to use 
 it some day." 
 
 " I must run my chances, sir," said Bayard in a 
 voice so low that it was scarcely audible. Instinc- 
 tively he drew his latch-key from his pocket and 
 held it out; but Mr. Hermon Worcester did not 
 deign to notice it. " I have never thought about 
 your money, Uncle. I 'm not that kind of fellow, 
 exactly. You have always been good to me, Un- 
 cle Hermon ! " He choked, and held out his hand 
 to say good-by. 
 
 " But look here see here you '11 stay to din- 
 ner? You'll go up to your room, Manuel?" 
 stammered the elder man. " I explicitly told you 
 that I did n't drive you out of your home. I don't 
 
88 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 desire any scene any unnecessary scandal. I 
 wish you to understand that you are not turned 
 into the street." 
 
 " I have promised to be in Windover this even 
 ing, to settle this matter," replied Bayard. He 
 looked over his uncle's head, through the old, pur 
 pie, Beacon Street glass, upon the waters of 
 Charles River ; then softly closed the library door, 
 looked for a moment about the dark, familiar hall, 
 took his hat from the peg on the carved mahogany 
 tree where he had hung his cap when he was a 
 little boy in Latin School, and went down the long, 
 stone steps. 
 
 It occurred to him to go back and tell Partredge 
 and Nancy to look after his uncle carefully, but he 
 remembered that he had no reason to give them 
 for his indefinite absence, bethought himself of his 
 uncle's horror of airing family affairs before ser- 
 vants, and so went on. 
 
 He walked up the street slowly, for he was 
 weak yet. At the door of an old friend, he was 
 tempted to pause and rest, but collected his senses, 
 and struggled on. 
 
 He turned to look for a cab ; then remembered 
 that he had no longer fifty cents to waste upon so 
 mere a luxury as the economy of physical strength^ 
 It was his first lesson in poverty, that a sick 
 man must walk, because he could not afford to 
 ride. Besides, it proved to be a private carriage 
 that he had seen. The elderly coachman, evi- 
 dently a family retainer, had just shut the door 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 89 
 
 and clambered to the box ; he was waiting to tuck 
 the green cloth robe deliberately about his elegant 
 legs, when a low exclamation from the coach win- 
 dow caused Bayard to look back. 
 
 Helen Carruth had opened the door, and stood 
 irresolute, with one foot upon the step, as if half 
 her mind were in, and half were out the carriage. 
 She was richly dressed in purple cloth, and had 
 that fashionable air which he could not conceive of 
 her as dispensing with if she were a missionary in 
 Tahiti. She looked vivid, vital, warm, and some- 
 how, gorgeous to him. 
 
 " You ? " she cried joyously ; then seemed to 
 recall herself, and stepped back. 
 
 He went up to her at once. 
 
 " I have been staying with Clara Kollins for a 
 week," she hastened to say. " I am just going 
 home. It 's her afternoon at the Portuguese Mis- 
 sion, so she could not see me off. I did not know 
 you were in town, Mr. Bayard." 
 
 " I am not," said Bayard, smiling wanly. " I 
 am on my way to Windover ; I am late to rny train 
 now." 
 
 " Why, jump in ! " said the young lady heartily, 
 ic We are going the same way ; and I 'm sure Mrs,, 
 Rollins would be delighted to have you. She 's at 
 the Woman's Branch." 
 
 " The Woman's who ? " asked Bayard, laughing 
 for the first time for many days. He had hesi- 
 tated for a moment ; then stepped into the car 
 riage, and shut the door, 
 
90 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " I presume you 'ye been in this vehicle before ? * 
 began Miss Carruth. 
 
 He nodded, smiling still. 
 
 " At intervals, as far back as I can remember. 
 Miss Clara and I used to go to the same dancing- 
 school." 
 
 " Mrs. Rollins was saying only yesterday what 
 an age it was since they had seen you Mr. Bay- 
 ard ! " she broke off, " you look ill. You are ill." 
 
 He had sunk back upon the olive satin cushions. 
 The familiar sense of luxury and ease came upon 
 him like a wave of mortal weakness. For a mo- 
 ment he did not trust himself to look at the girl 
 beside him. Her beauty, her gayety, her health, 
 her freedom from care, something even in her 
 personal elegance overcame him. She seemed to 
 whirl before his eyes, the laughing figure of a 
 happy Fortune, the dainty symbol of the life that 
 he had left and lost. The deliberate coachman 
 was now driving rapidly, and they were well on 
 their way over Beacon Hill. She gave Bayard 
 one of her long, steady looks. Something of 
 timidity stole over her vivacious face. 
 
 " Mr. Bayard," she said in a changed tone, " I 
 have heard all about it from my father. I wanted 
 fco tell you, but I had no way. I am glad to have 
 a chance to say I am sorry for you with all my 
 heart. And with all my soul, I honor you." 
 
 " Do you ? " said 'the disheartened man. " Then 
 I honor myself the more." 
 
 He turned now, and looked at her gratefully. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 91 
 
 This first drop of human sympathy from man or 
 woman of his own kind was inexpressibly sweet to 
 him. He could have raised her hand to his lips. 
 But they were in Mrs. Rollins's carriage, and on 
 Beacon Street. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Helen suddenly. " Look there ! 
 No, there! See that poor, horrible fellow ! Why, 
 he 's arrested ! The policemen are carrying him 
 pff." 
 
 They had now reached Tremont Street, where 
 the young lady had an errand which had decided 
 her direction to the northern stations. But for 
 the trifling circumstance that Helen Carruth had 
 promised her mother to bring out from a famous 
 Boston grocer's that particular brand of olive oil 
 which alone was worthy of a salad for the Trus- 
 tees' lunch, the event which followed would never 
 have occurred. Thus may the worry of a too ex- 
 cellent housekeeper lay its petty finger upon the 
 future of a man or of an enterprise. 
 
 Bayard looked out of the carriage window, and 
 uttered a disturbed exclamation. Struggling in 
 the iron grip of two policemen of assorted sizes, 
 the form and the tongue of Job Slip were forcibly 
 ornamenting Tremont Row. 
 
 " I must go. I must leave you. Excuse me. 
 Drive on without me, Miss Carruth. That is a 
 friend of mine in trouble there." 
 
 Bayard stopped the coachman with an imperious 
 tap, and a " Hold on, John ! " 
 
 " A what of yours ? " cried Helen. 
 
92 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 "It is one of my people," explained Bayard 
 curtly. He leaped from the carriage, raised his 
 hat, and ran. 
 
 " Just release this man, if you please," he said 
 to the police authoritatively. " I know him ; I am 
 his minister. I 'm going on the train he meant to 
 take. I '11 see him safely home. I '11 answer for 
 him." 
 
 "Well I don't know about that, sir," replied 
 the smaller policeman doubtfully. 
 
 But the larger one looked Bayard over, and 
 made answer : " Oh, bejabers, Tim, let 'im goa ! " 
 
 Job, who was not too far gone to recognize his 
 preserver, now threw his arms affectionately around 
 Bayard's recoiling neck, and became unendurably 
 maudlin. In a voice audible the width of the 
 street, and with streaming tears and loathsome 
 blessings, he identified Bayard as his dearest, best, 
 nearest, and most intimate of friends. A laughing 
 crowd collected and followed, as Bayard tried to 
 hurry to the station, encumbered by the grip of 
 Job's intoxicated affection. Now falling, now 
 staggering up, now down again, and ever firmly 
 held, Job looked up drunkenly into the white, 
 delicate face that seemed to rise above him by a 
 space as far as the span between the heavens and 
 the earth. Stupidly he was aware that the new 
 minister was doing something by him that was not 
 exactly usual. He began to talk in thick, hy- 
 phenated sentences about his wife and home, his 
 boy, and the trip he had taken to Georges'. He 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 93 
 
 had made, he averred, a hundred dollars (which 
 was possible), and had two dollars and thirty-seven 
 cents left (which was altogether probable). Job 
 complained that he had been robbed in Boston of 
 the difference, and, weeping, besought the new 
 minister to turn back and report the theft to the 
 police. 
 
 " We shall lose the train, Job," said Bayard 
 firmly. " We must get home to your wife and 
 little boy." 
 
 " Go wherever y' say ! " cried Job pleasantly, 
 " Go to h along of you, if you say so ! " 
 
 There was something so grotesque in the situa- 
 tion that Bayard's soul recoiled within him. He 
 was not used to this kind of thing. He was no 
 Christ, but a plain human man, and a young man 
 at that. His sense of dignity was terribly hurt. 
 Without turning his head, he knew when the car- 
 riage drove on. He felt her eyes upon him ; he 
 knew the moment when she took them off; Job 
 was attempting to kiss him at that particular 
 crisis. 
 
 Bayard managed to reach the last platform of 
 the last car as it moved out of the station, and to 
 get his charge to Windover without an accident. 
 He had plenty of time for reflection on the trip ; 
 but he reflected as little as possible. With his arm 
 linked firmly through Job's and his eyes closed, he 
 became a seer of visions, not a thinker of thoughts. 
 Her face leaned out of the carriage window, 
 faded, formed, and dimmed, and formed again. 
 
94 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 He saw the velvet on her dress, the little dash of 
 gold color on her purple bonnet, the plain distin- 
 guished fashion of her yellow hair about her fore- 
 head. He saw the astonishment leap into her 
 brown eyes, and that look which no sibyl could 
 have interpreted, forming about her merry lips. 
 He heard the coachman say, " Shall I drive on, 
 Miss ? " And the answer, " Yes, John, drive on. 
 I must not miss the train." 
 
 He opened his eyes, and saw the sullen horizon 
 of the sea across the marshes, and the loathsome 
 face of Job leaning against the casement of the 
 car window at his side. 
 
 By the time they had reached Windover, Slip 
 was sleepy and quite manageable. Bayard con- 
 sulted his watch. It was the hour for his evening 
 appointment with the officers of the new parish. 
 
 " Again ! " he thought. He looked at the 
 drunkard wearily. Then the flash of inspiration 
 fired his tired face. 
 
 " Come, Job/' he said suddenly. " Never mind 
 our suppers. Come with me." 
 
 He took Job as he was, torpid, sodden, dis- 
 gusting, a creature of the mud, a problem of the 
 mire. The committee sat in the anxious conclave 
 of people embarked upon a doubtful and unpopu- 
 lar enterprise. Emanuel Bayard pushed Job Slip 
 before him into the pretty parlors of the ex-treas- 
 urer of the old First Church. For the treasurer 
 had followed the come-outers. He had joined the 
 poor and humble people who, in fear and faith, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 95 
 
 had tremblingly organized the experiment for 
 which, as yet, they had no other name than that 
 they gave it in their prayers. Christ's work, they 
 called it, then. The treasurer was their only 
 man of property. His jaw dropped when he saw 
 Job. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the young pastor, "gentle- 
 men, I have brought you a sample of the material 
 under discussion. What are we going to do with 
 this?" 
 
VII. 
 
 JANE GRANITE stood at the foot of the steep, 
 uncarpeted stairs. She had a stone-china cup 
 filled with tea in her hand. She had hesitation 
 in her mind, and longing in her heart. When the 
 minister had sent word that he would eat no sup- 
 per, it was plain that something must be done. 
 Her mother was out, and Jane had no superior 
 intelligence to consult. For Mrs. Granite was 
 appointed to the doom that overtakes the women 
 of a poor and struggling religious movement ; she 
 was ex-officio beggar for the new mission ; on this 
 especial occasion she was charged with the duty 
 of wringing a portion of the minister's almost 
 invisible salary out of the least unfriendly citizens 
 of the town. The minister had observed her from 
 his window, tugging at her black skirts as she sal- 
 lied forth, ankle-deep, in the slush of the February 
 afternoon ; and his brows had darkened at the 
 sight. For the good woman would trudge and 
 soak five miles for what? Possibly five dollars. 
 How dreary the devices of small people to achieve 
 large ends ! 
 
 To the young man who had never had to think 
 what anything cost, the cold, pecuniary facts of 
 his position were galling past the power of these 
 simple people to comprehend. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 97 
 
 He did not care too much on his own account. 
 He felt more surprise than impatience to see his 
 coat turn shiny and frayed, and to know that he 
 could not get another. He was learning not to 
 mind his straw mattress as much as he did. at 
 first ; and to educate himself to going without 
 magazines, and to the quality of Mrs. Granite's 
 tea. When a man deliberately elects a great 
 personal sacrifice, he does not concern himself 
 with its details as women are more likely to do. 
 
 But there were aspects of his chosen work to 
 which his soul was as sore as a boy's. He could 
 not accustom himself with the ease of a poor 
 man's son to the fact that a superb, supreme faith 
 like the Christianity of Christ must beg for its 
 living. " It degrades ! " he thought, looking up 
 from his books. " Lowell was right when he said 
 that no man should preach who had n't an in- 
 dependent property." His Bible fell from his 
 clenched hand; he picked it up penitently, and 
 tenderly smoothed the crumpled leaf at which 
 it had opened. Half unconsciously, he glanced, 
 and read : 
 
 " Take no scrip in your purse ; " his burning 
 eye followed along the page ; softened, and grew 
 moist. 
 
 " Perhaps on the whole," he said aloud, " He 
 really knew as much about it as any American 
 poet." 
 
 He returned patiently to his preparation for the 
 evening service, for he worked hard for these fish- 
 
98 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 ermen and drunkards harder than he had ever 
 worked at anything in his life. To make them 
 one half hour's talk, he read, he ransacked, he 
 toiled, he thought, he dreamed, he prayed. 
 
 The only thing which he had asked leave to 
 take from his uncle's house, was his own library,, 
 It piled Mrs. Granite's spare chamber from the 
 old, brown carpet to the low and dingy ceiling. 
 Barricades of books stood on the floor by the ugly 
 little coal-stove ; and were piled upon the stained 
 pine table at which he sat to study in a hard 
 wood chair with a turkey-red cushion. Of the 
 pictures, dear to his youth, and to his trained taste, 
 but two had come through with him in the flying 
 leap from Beacon Street to Mrs. Granite's. Over 
 the table in his study a fine engraving watched 
 him. It was Guide's great Saint Michael. Above 
 the straw mattress in the chilly closet where he 
 slept hung a large photograph of Leonardo's 
 Christ ; the one from the Last Supper, as it was 
 found in the ruined fresco on the monastery wall. 
 
 But Jane Granite stood irresolute upon the 
 bare, steep stairs, with the stone-china teacup in 
 her hand. 
 
 The minister had never concentrated his mind 
 on Jane. He was a busy man. She was a mod- 
 est, quiet girl ; she helped her mother " do " his 
 rooms, and never slammed the door when she went 
 out. He felt a certain gratitude to her, for the 
 two women took trouble for him far beyond the 
 merits of the meagre sum allowed them for his 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 99 
 
 bread and codfish. But for the life of him, if he 
 had been required to, he could not have told any- 
 body how Jane Granite looked. 
 
 When her timid knock struck the panel of his 
 door, he started impatiently, put down his pen, 
 and patiently bade her enter. 
 
 " I thought perhaps, sir you would drink your 
 tea? " pleaded Jane. " You have n't eaten a mor- 
 sel, and mother will mind it when she comes 
 home." 
 
 Bayard looked at her in a dazed way ; trying to 
 see the connection between forty-cent Japan tea 
 and that beautiful thing said of Whitefield, that 
 he " forgot all else about the men before him, but 
 their immortality and their misery." 
 
 " It 's getting cold," said Jane, with quivering 
 lip. " I stood on the stairs so long before I could 
 make up my mind to disturb you. Let me get a 
 hot cup, now, sir do ! " 
 
 "Why, I'll come down!" said Bayard. "I 
 must not make myself as troublesome as this." 
 
 He pushed away his books, and followed her to 
 the sitting-room, where, in default of a dining- 
 room, and in vague deference to the antecedents 
 of a guest popularly reported not to be used to 
 eating in the kitchen, the meals of the family 
 were served. 
 
 " Maybe you 'd eat the fish-hash a mouthful, 
 sir?" asked Jane, brightening, "and there's the 
 stewed prunes." 
 
 Bayard looked at her, as she ran to and fro, 
 
100 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 flushed and happy at her little victory over his 
 supperless intentions. Jane was a trig, neat 
 body ; small, as the coast girls often are I 
 wonder why? whether because the mother was 
 under-fed or over-anxious when the fleets were out? 
 Jane Granite wore a blue gingham dress, closely 
 fitted to a pleasant figure. She had a pleasant 
 face, too ; she had no beauty, but that certain 
 something more attractive than beauty to many 
 men, a kind of compactness of feature, and an 
 ease of outline which haunts the retina ; it is not 
 easy to describe, but we all know it. Her mother 
 had told the minister that Jane was keeping com- 
 pany that is the Windover phrase with some 
 one ; the details had escaped his memory. 
 
 He looked at her, now, for the first time atten- 
 tively, as she served his tea. She flitted to and 
 fro lightly. She sang in the kitchen when she saw 
 him smile. When he said, " Thank you, Jane ! 
 You have given me a delicious supper," a charm- 
 ing expression crossed her face. He observed it 
 abstractedly, and thought : How kind these good 
 people are to me ! The paper shades were up, 
 and Jane wished to draw them when she lighted 
 the kerosene lamp ; but Bayard liked to watch the 
 sea, as he often did at twilight. The harbor was 
 full, for the weather was coming on wild. Clouds 
 marshaled and broke, and retreated, and formed 
 upon a stormy sky. The lights of anchored fleets 
 tossed up and down in the violet-gray shadow. The 
 breakers growled upon the opposite shore. The 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 101 
 
 best thing about his lodging was its near and al- 
 most unobstructed view of the sea, which dashed 
 against a slip of a beach between the wharves of 
 Windover Point, within a thousand feet of Mrs. 
 Granite's cottage. 
 
 As he sat, sipping his green tea, and making be- 
 lieve with his hash, to save the feelings of the girl ; 
 watching the harbor steadily and quietly, the while, 
 and saying nothing he was startled by the ap- 
 parition of a man's face, pressed stealthily against 
 the window-pane, and disappearing as quickly as it 
 came. Bayard had been sitting between the win- 
 dow and the light. Jane was dishing out his 
 prunes from a vegetable dish into a blue willow 
 saucer, and had seen nothing. Wishing not to 
 alarm the girl, he went to the window quietly, and 
 looked out. As he did so, he perceived that the 
 intruder had his hand on the knob of the front 
 door. Bayard sprang, and the two met in the cot- 
 tage entry. 
 
 " What are you doing here ? " began Bayard, 
 barring the way. 
 
 " I guess I 'd better ask what are you a-doin' 
 here," replied the other, crowding by the minister 
 with one push of an athletic shoulder. " I 'm on 
 my own ground. I ain't so sure of you." 
 
 Little Jane uttered a cry, and the athletic young 
 man strode forward, and somewhat ostentatiously 
 put his arm about her waist. 
 
 " Ah, I see ! " smiled the minister. " It is 
 strange that we have not met before. We must 
 
102 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 often have been in the house at the same time. I 
 am a little absent-minded. Perhaps it is my fault. 
 A hundred pardons, Mr. ?" 
 
 Trawl. Ben Trawl was the name. Ben Trawl 
 was not cordial. Perhaps that would be asking 
 too much of the lover who had been mistaken for 
 a burglar by another man ; and the young minister 
 was already quite accustomed to the varying ex- 
 pressions with which a provincial town receives 
 the leader of an unpopular cause. He recognized 
 Ben Trawl now ; the young man who had the 
 straight eyebrows, and who did not drink, who had 
 been one of the crowd at the fight in Angel Alley 
 on the ordination day which never had ordained. 
 
 The pastor found the situation embarrassing, 
 and was glad when Mrs. Granite came in, soaked 
 through, and tired, with drabbled skirts. 
 
 She had collected six dollars and thirty-seven 
 cents. 
 
 Bayard ground his teeth, and escaped to his 
 stud 3^ as soon as he could. There they heard him, 
 pacing up and down hotly, till seven o'clock. Bay- 
 ard had arranged one of those piteous attempts to 
 " amuse the people," into which so much wealth 
 of heart and brain is flung, with such atmospheric 
 results. His notion of religious teaching did not 
 end with the Bible, though it began there. The 
 fishermen who had irreverently named the present 
 course of talks " the Dickens," crowded to hear 
 them, nevertheless. The lecture of that evening 
 ("Sydney Carton," he called it) was a venture 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 103 
 
 upon which Bayard had expended a good deal of 
 thought and vitality. 
 
 Poor, wet Mrs. Granite waded out again, without 
 a murmur, to hear it ; she walked beside the minis- 
 ter, alone ; it was a long walk, for the new people 
 met in the well-known hall near the head of Angel 
 Alley. 
 
 " Ben Trawl 's kinder off his hook," she explained 
 apologetically. " He would n't come along of us, 
 nor he would n't let Jane come, neither. He has 
 them spells." 
 
 Jane Granite watched them off with aching 
 heart. As he closed the door, the minister smiled 
 and lifted his hat to her. Where was there a smile 
 like his in all the world of men ? And where a 
 man who thought or knew so little of the magic 
 which his beauty wrought ? 
 
 For love of this radiance and this wonder the 
 heart of the coldest woman of the world might have 
 broken. Little Jane Granite looked after him till 
 he was drowned in the dark. She came in and 
 stood at the window, busying herself to draw the 
 shade. But Ben Trawl watched her with half- 
 closed eyes ; and when bright, wide eyes turn dull 
 and narrow, beware of them ! 
 
 " Come here ! " said Ben, in the voice of a man 
 who had "kept company" with a girl for three 
 years. In Windover, the respectable young people 
 do not flirt or intrigue ; breach of troth is almost un- 
 known among them. To walk with a girl on Sun- 
 day afternoon, and to kiss her Sunday evening, is 
 
104 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 to marry her, as a matter of course. Ben Trawl 
 spoke in the imperious tone of the seafaring people 
 who call a wife " my woman," and who lie on the 
 lounge in the kitchen while she brings the water 
 from the well. 
 
 " You come here, Jane, and sit on the sofy along 
 side of me ! I 've got a word or so to say to you." 
 
 Jane Granite came. She was frightened. She 
 sat down beside her lover, and timidly surrendered 
 the work-worn little hand which he seized and 
 crushed with cruel violence within his own. 
 
 " Mr. Granite was n't never wholly satisfied 
 about Ben," Mrs. Granite was saying to the minis- 
 ter as they splashed through the muddy slush. 
 " His father 's Trawl the liquor dealer, down to 
 Angel Alley, opposite our place, a little below. But 
 Jane says Ben don't touch it; and he don't. I 
 don't know 's I 've any call to come between ner 
 and Ben. He 's a stiddy fellow, and able to sup- 
 port her, and he 's that fond of Jane " 
 
 " He seems to be," said Bayard musingly. His 
 thoughts were not with Mrs. Granite. He hardly 
 knew what she had said. He was not used to this 
 petty, parish atmosphere. It came hard to him. 
 He underestimated the value of these wearisome 
 trifles, in the large work performed by little people. 
 Nothing in the world seemed to him of less im- 
 portance than the natural history of Ben Trawl. 
 
 " The wind is east," he said abstractedly, " and 
 there 's a very heavy sea on." 
 
 He cast at the harbor and the sky the anxious 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 105 
 
 look habitual with the people of Windover ; the 
 stranger had already acquired it. He had not 
 been a month in the fishing-town before he noticed 
 that the women all spoke of their natural foe as 
 " the terrible sea." 
 
 The hall which the new people had leased for 
 their services and entertainments had long borne 
 the grim name of Seraph's Rest ; having been, in 
 fact, for years, a sailors' dance-hall of the darkest 
 dye. 
 
 " Give us," Bayard had said, " the worst spot in 
 the worst street of this town. We will make it the 
 best, or we will own ourselves defeated in our 
 work." 
 
 In such streets, and in such places, news has 
 wings. There is no spot in Windover where 
 rumor is run down so soon as in Angel Alley. 
 
 Bayard had talked perhaps half an hour, when 
 he perceived by the restlessness in his crowded 
 and attentive audience that something had hap- 
 pened. He read on for a moment : 
 
 " ' Are you dying for him ? ' she whispered. 
 ' And his wife and child. Hush ! Yes? ' 
 
 Then, with the perfect ease which he always 
 sought to cultivate in that place between speaker 
 and hearer, " What is the matter? " he asked in a 
 conversational tone. 
 
 " Sir," said an old captain, rising, " there 's a 
 vessel gone ashore off Ragged Rock." 
 
 Bayard swept his book and manuscript off the 
 desk. 
 
106 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " I was about to read you," he said, " how a 
 poor fellow with a wretched life behind him died 
 a noble death. Perhaps we can do something -as 
 grand as he did. Anyhow, we '11 try. Come, 
 boys!" 
 
 He thrust himself into his coat, and sprang 
 down among the audience. 
 
 " Come on ! You know the way better than I 
 do ! If there 's anything to do, we '11 do it. Lead 
 on, boys ! I 'm with you ! " 
 
 The audience poured into Angel Alley, with the 
 minister in their midst. Confusion ran riot out- 
 side. The inmates of all the dens on the street 
 were out. Unnoticed, they jostled decent citizens 
 who had flocked as near as possible to the news- 
 bearer. Panting and white, a hatless messenger 
 from the lighthouse, who had run all the way at 
 the keeper's order to break the black word to the 
 town, reiterated all he knew : " It 's the Clara 
 Em ! She weighed this afternoon under full can- 
 vas and she 's struck with fourteen men aboard ! 
 I knew I could n't raise nobody at the old Life- 
 Saving Station " 
 
 " It 's t'other side the Point, anyhow ! " cried a 
 voice from the crowd. 
 
 " It 's four mile away ! " yelled another. 
 
 " Good heavens, man ! " cried Bayard. " You 
 don't propose to wait for them ? " 
 
 " I don't see 's there 's anything we can c7o," ob- 
 served the old captain deliberately. "The har- 
 bor 's chockf ul. If anybody could do anything 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 107 
 
 for 'em, some o' them coasters but ye see there 
 can't no boat live off Ragged Rock in a breeze o' 
 wind like this." 
 
 " How far off is this wreck ? " demanded Bay- 
 ard, inwardly cursing his own ignorance of nau- 
 tical matters and of the region. " Can't we get up 
 some carts and boats and ropes and ride over 
 there ? " 
 
 " It 's a matter of three mile an' a half," replied 
 the mate of a collier, "and it's comin' on thick. 
 But I hev known cases where a cart Now 
 there 's them I-talians with their barnana carts." 
 
 " You won't get no fog with this here breeze," 
 contended a very ancient skipper. 
 
 " What '11 you bet ? " said the mate of the col- 
 lier. 
 
 An Italian with a fruit cart was pushed forward 
 by the crowd ; an express cart was impressed ; 
 ropes, lanterns, and a dory appeared from no one 
 knew where, at the command of no one knew who. 
 Bayard suggested blankets and dry clothes. The 
 proposal seemed to cause surprise, but these sup- 
 plies were volunteered from somewhere. 
 
 " Pile in, boys! " cried the minister, in a ringing 
 voice. He sprang into one of the carts, and it 
 filled in a moment. One of the horses became 
 frightened at the hubbub and reared. Men swore 
 and women shrieked. In the momentary delay, 
 a hand reached over the wheel, and plucked at 
 Bayard's sleeve. He flashed the lantern in his 
 hand, and saw a woman's strained, set face. It 
 
108 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 was Job Slip's wife, Mari, with the little boy crying 
 at her skirts. 
 
 " Sir," she said hoarsely, " if it 's the Clara Em, 
 Ae 's aboard of her for they shipped him at five 
 o'clock, though they see the storm a-comin' and 
 him as drunk as death. But it 's true he got it 
 at Trawl's I see 'em lift him acrost the wharf 
 an' sling him over int' the dory." 
 
 " I '11 do my best," said Bayard with set teeth. 
 He reached over the wheel as the horses started, 
 plunging, and wrung the hand of the drunkard's 
 wife. He could not trust himself to say more. 
 Such a vision of what life meant to such a woman 
 swept through Angel Alley upon the wings of the 
 gale, that he felt like a man whose eyes have 
 beheld a panorama on a stage in hell. 
 
 Many people, as the carts rolled through the 
 town, followed on foot, among them a few women 
 whose husbands, or lovers, or brothers were 
 known to be aboard the Clara Em. 
 
 u Here 's an old woman with a boy aboard ! 
 Seems you might find room in one them wagons 
 for her ! " cried a young voice. It was the girl 
 known to Windover only by the name of Lena ; 
 she for whom the " terrible sea " could have no 
 horrors; the one woman of them from whom no 
 betrothed lover could sail away ; to whom no hus- 
 band should return. 
 
 " She 's right about that. We must manage 
 somehow!" called Bayard. Strong hands leaned 
 out and swept the old woman up over the wheel, 
 and the horses galloped on. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 109 
 
 There was neither rain nor snow ; but the storm, 
 in the seaman's sense of the word, was approach- 
 ing its height. The wind had now become a gale, 
 and blew southeast. The sky was ominously 
 black. To Bayard's sensitive and excited imagi- 
 nation, as he looked out from the reeling wagon, 
 the mouth of the harbor seemed to gape and grin ; 
 the lights of the fleet, furled and anchored for 
 dear life, lost their customary pleasant look, and 
 snapped and shone like teeth in the throat of a 
 monster. 
 
 The wagons rolled on madly ; the horses, lashed 
 to their limit of speed, leaped down Windover 
 Point. They had now left the road, and were 
 dashing across the downs which stretched a mile 
 farther to the eastern shore. The roughness of the 
 route had become appalling, but a Cape horse is 
 as used to boulders as a Cape fisherman ; neither 
 wagon overset, though both rolled like foundering 
 ships. The lanterns cut swathes of light in the 
 blackness which bounding wheels and racing heels 
 mowed down before them. 
 
 Walls of darkness rose ahead, and at its outer- 
 most, uttermost margin roared the sea. It seemed 
 to Bayard as if the rescuing party were plunging 
 into eternal mystery. 
 
 The old woman whose son was aboard the Clara 
 Em crouched at the minister's feet. Both sat in 
 the dory, which filled the wagon, and which was 
 packed with passengers. The old woman's bare 
 hands were clenched together, and her lips shut 
 
110 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 like iron hinges. Bayard wondered at her mas- 
 sive silence. It was something primeval, solemn, 
 outside of his experience. The women of the 
 shore, in stress like hers, would weep, would sob, 
 or shriek. But to the women of the sea this 
 anguish was as old as life itself : to it they were 
 born, and of it they were doomed to die ; tl?ey 
 bore it as they did the climate of the freezing 
 Cape. 
 
 "That there saving service couldn't ha' done 
 nothin' agin' a wreck on Ragged Rock if they 
 wanted to," observed the old captain (they called 
 him Captain Hap), peering from the wagon to- 
 wards the harbor shore. "It's jest's I told ye; 
 they're too fur five mile across." 
 
 " But why is there no station nearer ? " de- 
 manded Bayard with the warmth of inexperience. 
 " Why is nothing put over here if this reef is 
 so bad where it is needed ? " 
 
 " Wall," said Captain Hap, with deliberation, 
 " that 's a nateral question for a land-lubber. 
 Every seaman knows there ain't no need of gettin' 
 wrecked on that there reef. It 's as plain as the 
 beard on your face. Wind over Light to the 
 west'ard, Twin Lights to the east'ard, a fog 
 bell, and a bell-buoy, and a whistlin'-buoy, 
 Lord! why, everybody knows how to keep off 
 Ragged Rock ! " " 
 
 " Then how did this vessel happen to strike ? " 
 persisted Bayard. The men interchanged glances, 
 and no one answered him. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. Ill 
 
 " Hi there ! Look, look ! I see her ! I see 
 her spars ! " yelled a young fellow on the front 
 seat of the wagon. " It 's her ! It 's the Clara 
 
 Em ! . . . Lord A'mighty ! what in was 
 
 they thinkin' of ? She 's got on full canvas ! See 
 her ! see her ! see her ! See her lights ! It 's 
 her, and she 's bumpin' on the reef! " 
 
 Cries of horror ran from lip to lip. The driver 
 lashed his horses onward, and the men in the 
 wagons flung their lanterns to and fro in uncon- 
 trollable excitement. Some leaped over the wheels 
 and ran shouting against the gale. 
 
 " Clara Em, ahoy ! Clara Em, aho o oy ! " 
 
 But the old woman at Bayard's feet sat still. 
 Her lips only moved. She stared straight ahead. 
 
 " Is she praying ? or freezing ? Perhaps she 's 
 out of her mind," thought Bayard. 
 
 He gently pulled her blanket-shawl closer over 
 her bare head, and wrapped it around her before 
 he sprang from the wagon. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THERE was but little depth of snow upon the 
 downs and cliffs, but such as remained served to 
 reflect and to magnify all possible sources of light. 
 These were few enough and sorely needed. The 
 Windover Light, a revolving lantern of the second 
 power, is red and strong. It flashed rapidly, now 
 blood-red and now lamp-black. Bayard thought 
 of the pillar of fire and cloud that led the ancient 
 people. There should have been by rights a 
 moon ; and breaks in battalions of clouds, at rare 
 intervals, let through a shimmer paler than dark- 
 ness, though darker than light. Such a reduction 
 of the black tone of the night had mercifully be- 
 fallen, when the staggering wagons clattered and 
 stopped upon the large, oval pebbles of the beach. 
 
 The fog, which is shy of a gale, especially at 
 that season of the year, had not yet come in, and 
 the vessel could be clearly seen. She lay upon 
 the reef, broadside to the breakers; she did not 
 pitch, but, to a nautical eye, her air of repose was 
 the bad thing about her. She was plainly held 
 fast. Her red port-light, still burning, showed as 
 each wave went down, and the gray outlines of 
 her rigging could be discerned. Her foremast had 
 broken off about five feet from the deck, and the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 113 
 
 spar, held by the rigging, was ramming the sides 
 of the vessel. 
 
 The astonishing rumor was literally true. The 
 Clara Em one of the famous fishermen of which 
 Windover was too proud to be vain ; the Clara 
 Em, newly-built and nobly furnished, none of 
 your old-time schooners, clumsy of hulk and 
 rotten of timbers, but the fastest runner on the 
 coast, the stanchest keel that cleft the harbor, 
 fine in her lines as a yacht, and firm in her beams 
 as an ocean steamer the Clara Em, fearing 
 neither gods nor men nor weather, and bound for 
 Georges' on a three weeks' fresh-fishing trip, had 
 deliberately weighed anchor in the teeth of a 
 March southeaster, and had flung all her clean, 
 green-white sails to the gale. As nearly as could 
 be made out from the shore, she had every stitch 
 up, and not a reef to her face, and she lay over 
 against the rock like a great eagle whose wings 
 were broken. Even a landsman could compre- 
 hend the nature of this dare-devil act ; and Bay- 
 ard, running to lend a hand to slide the dory from 
 the wagon, uttered an exclamation of indignant 
 horror. 
 
 " How did this happen ? Were they mad ? " 
 
 " Full," replied the old captain laconically. 
 
 " Yes, I see she 's under full sail. But why ? " 
 he persisted innocently. 
 
 The old captain, with a curious expression, 
 flashed a lantern in the young minister's face, but 
 made no reply. 
 
 Cries could now be heard from the vessel ; for 
 
114 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 the wind, being dead off, bore sounds from sea to 
 shore which could by no means travel from shore 
 to sea. Eagged Rock was a rough spot in the 
 kindest weather; and in that gale, and with the 
 wind in that direction, the roar and power of the 
 surf were great. But it should be remembered 
 that the blow had not been of long duration; 
 hence the sea was not what it would be in a few 
 hours if the gale should hold. In this fact lay the 
 only possible chance of extending rescue in any 
 form to the shipwrecked crew. 
 
 " Clara Em ! Aho oy oy ! " yelled a dozen 
 voices. But the united throats of all Windover 
 could not have made themselves articulate to the 
 straining ears upon the schooner. 
 
 " Where 's yer crew ? Show up, there ! Can't 
 ye do nothin 1 for yerselves ? Where 's yer dories ? 
 Hey? What? Clara Em ! Aho oy oy ! " 
 
 " They 're deef as the two years' drownded," 
 said the old captain. "An' they ain't two hun- 
 dred feet from shore." 
 
 " Why, ther , surely we can save them ! " cried 
 Bayard joyfully. But no man assented to the 
 cheerful words. 
 
 The dory, a strong specimen of its kind, was 
 now out of the wagon, and a score of arms dragged 
 it over the pebbles. The surf dashed far up the 
 beach, splashing men, boat, wagon, horses. 
 Against the cliff the spray rose a hundred feet, 
 hissing, into the air. The old captain eyed the 
 sea and measured the incoming rollers with his 
 deep-set eye. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 115 
 
 "Ye cayn't do it," he pronounced. "There 
 ain't a dory in Windover can live in that " he 
 pointed his gaunt arm at the breakers. 
 
 " Anyhow, we '11 try ! " rang out a strong voice. 
 Cries from the wreck arose again. Some of the 
 younger men pushed the dory off. Bayard sprang 
 to join them. 
 
 " I can row ! " he cried with boyish eagerness ; 
 " I was stroke at Harvard ! " 
 
 "This ain't Charles River," replied one of the 
 men ; " better stand back, Parson." 
 
 They kindly withstood him, and leaped in with- 
 out him, four of them, seamen born and bred. 
 They ran the dory out into the surf. He held his 
 lantern high to light them. In their wet oil-skins 
 their rough, wild outlines looked like divers, or 
 like myths of the deep. They leaped in and 
 seized the oars with one of the wild cries of the 
 sailor who goes to his duty, his dinner, or his 
 death, by the rhythm of a song or the thrill of a 
 shout. The dory rose on a tremendous comber, 
 trembled, turned, whirled, and sank from sight. 
 Then came yells, and a crash. 
 
 "There!" howled Captain Hap, stamping his 
 foot, " I told ye so ! " 
 
 " She 's over ! " 
 
 " She 's busted ! " 
 
 " She 's smashed to kindlin' wood ! " 
 
 " Here they be ! Here they come ! Haul 'em 
 in!" 
 
 The others ran out into the surf and helped the 
 
116 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 brave fellows, soaked and discomfited, up the 
 beach. They were badly bruised, and one of them 
 was bleeding. 
 
 The pedestrians from the town had now come 
 up ; groups of men, and the few women ; and a 
 useless crowd stood staring at the vessel. A big 
 third wave rolled over and smashed the port 
 light 
 
 " It 's been going on all these ages," thought 
 Bayard, " the helpless shore against the al- 
 mighty sea." 
 
 " Only two hundred feet away ! " he cried ; " I 
 can't see why something can't be done ! I say, 
 something shall! Where are your ropes? 
 Where are your wits? Where is all your edu- 
 cation to this kind of thing? Are you going to 
 let them drown before your eyes ? " 
 
 " There ain't no need of goin' so far 's that,*' 
 said the old captain with the aggravating serenity 
 of his class. " If she holds till it ebbs they can 
 clomber ashore, every man- jack of 'em. Ragged 
 Rock ain't an island except at flood. It 's a long, 
 pinted tongue o' rock runnin' along, so. You 
 don't onderstand it, Parson. Why, they could 
 eeny most walk ashore, come mornin', if she 
 holds." 
 
 " It 's a good pull from now till sun-up," ob- 
 jected a fisherman. " And it 's the question if she 
 don't break up." 
 
 " Anyhow, I 'm going to try," insisted Bayard. 
 A rope ran out through his hands, shot high 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 117 
 
 into the air, fell into the wind, and dropped into 
 the breakers. It had carried about ten feet. For 
 the gale had taken the stout cable between its 
 teeth, and tossed it, as a dog does a skein of silk 5 
 played with it, shook it to and fro, and hurled it 
 away. The black lips of the clouds closing over 
 the moon, seemed to open and grin as the old 
 captain said : 
 
 " You ken keep on tryin' long 's you hev the 
 inclination. Mebbe the women-folks will feel 
 better for 't ; but you cay n't do it." 
 
 " Can't get a rope to a boat two hundred feet 
 away ? " demanded Bayard. 
 
 " Not without apparatus, no, sir ! Not in a 
 blow like this here." The old seaman raised his 
 voice to a bellow to make himself audible twelve 
 feet away. " Why, it 's reelly quite a breeze o' 
 wind," he said. 
 
 " Then what can we do ? " persisted Bayard, 
 facing the beach in great agitation. " What are 
 we here for, anyhow ? " 
 
 " We ken watch for 'em to come ashore," re- 
 plied the captain grimly. 
 
 Turning, in a ferment half of anger, half of 
 horror, to the younger men, Bayard saw that 
 some one was trying to start a bonfire. Drift- 
 wood had been collected from dry spots in the 
 rocks or had a bucket of coal-tar been brought 
 by some thoughtful hand? And in a little cave 
 at the foot of the cliff, a woman, upon her knees 
 in the shallow snow, was sheltering a tiny blaze 
 
118 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 within her two hands. It was the girl Lena. 
 She wore a woolen cap, of the fashion called a 
 Tarn o' Shanter, and a coarse fur shoulder cape. 
 Her rude face showed suddenly in the flaming 
 light. It was full of anxious kindliness. He 
 heard her say : 
 
 " It '11 hearten 'em anyhow. It '11 show 'em 
 they ain't deserted of God and men-folks too." 
 
 " Where 's my old lady ? " added the girl, look- 
 ing about. "I want to get her up to this fire 
 She 's freezing somewheres." 
 
 " Look alive, Lena ! Here she is ! " called one 
 of the fishermen. He pointed to the cliff that 
 hung over Ragged Rock. The old woman stood 
 on the summit and on the edge. How she had 
 climbed there, Heaven knew ; no one had seen or 
 aided her ; she stood, bent and rigid, with her 
 blanket shawl about her head. Her gray hair 
 blew back from her forehead in two lean locks. 
 Black against the darkness, stone carved out from 
 stone, immovable, dumb, a statue of the storm, 
 she stared out straight before her. She seemed a 
 spirit of the wind and wet, a solemn figure-head, 
 an anathema, or a prayer ; symbol of a thousand 
 watchers frozen on a thousand shores: woman 
 as the sea has made her. 
 
 The girl had clambered up the cliff like a cat, 
 and could be seen putting her arms around the old 
 woman, and pleading with her. Lena did indeed 
 succeed so far as to persuade her down to the fire, 
 where she chafed the poor old creature's hands, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 119 
 
 and held to her shrunken lips a bottle of Jamaica 
 ginger that some fisherman's wife had brought. 
 But the old woman refused. 
 
 " Keep it for Johnny," she said, " till he gets 
 ashore*" It was the only thing she had been heard 
 to say that night. 
 
 She pushed the ginger away, and crawled back 
 to her solitary station on the cliff. Some one said ? 
 
 " Let be ! Let her be I " 
 
 And some one else said : 
 
 "Whar's the use?" 
 
 At that moment a voice arose : 
 
 " There 's the cap'n ! There 's Joe Salt, cap'n 
 of the Clara Em ! He 's acrosst the bowsprit 
 signalin' ! He 's tryin' to communicate ! " 
 
 " We have n't seen another living figure mov- 
 ing across that vessel," said Bayard, whose inex- 
 perience was as much perplexed as his humanity 
 was distressed and thwarted by the situation. " I 
 see one man on the bows yes. But where are 
 the rest ? You don't suppose they 're washed over- 
 board already? Oh, this is horrible!" he cried. 
 
 He was overwhelmed at the comparative, almost 
 indifferent calmness of his fellow-townsmen. 
 
 The light-keeper and the old captain had run 
 out upon the reef. They held both hands to their 
 ears. The shouts from the vessel continued. 
 Every man held his breath. The whirling blast, 
 like the cone of a mighty phonograph, bore a faint 
 articulation from the wreck. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried the young minister. " He says 
 they 're all sunk ! " 
 
120 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 He was shocked to hear a laugh issue from the 
 lips of Captain Hap, and to see, in the light of the 
 fire, something like a smile upon the keeper's face, 
 
 " You don't understand, sir," said one of the fish- 
 ermen respectfully. " He says they 're all " 
 
 " May as well out with it, Bob," said another 
 " The parson 's got to get his initiation someways. 
 Cap'n Salt says they 're drunk, sir. The crew of 
 the Clara Em is all drunk." 
 
 At this moment a terrible shriek rang above the 
 roar of the storm. It came from the old woman 
 on the top of the cliff. 
 
 Her eyes had been the first, but they were not 
 the only ones now, to perceive the signs of arousing 
 life upon the wreck. 
 
 A second man was seen to climb across the 
 bows, to pause for an instant, and then to plunge. 
 He went out of sight in a moment. The inrolling 
 surf glittered in the blaze of the bonfires like a cat- 
 aract of flame. The swimmer reappeared, strug- 
 gled, threw up his arms and disappeared. 
 
 " I have stood this as long as I can," said Bay- 
 ard in a low, firm voice. " Give me a rope ! Tie 
 it around me, some of you, and hold on ! I 'm 
 going to try to save that man." 
 
 " I '11 go, myself," said one of the fishermen 
 slowly. 
 
 46 Bob," replied the minister, " how many chil- 
 dren have you ? " 
 
 if - Eleven, sir." 
 
 " Stay where you are, then," said Bayard. " Such 
 things are for lonely men." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 121 
 
 " Bring the rope ! " he commanded. " Tie it 
 yourselves you know how in one of your sail- 
 or's knots ; something that will hold. I 'm a good 
 swimmer. I saved a man once on a yachting trip c 
 Quick, there ! Faster ! " 
 
 " There 's another ! " cried the light-keeper t 
 " There 's a second feller jumped overboard 
 swimming for his life ! Look, look, look ! He 's 
 sunk no he ain't, he ain't ! He 's bearing down 
 against the rocks My God ! Look at him, 
 look, look, look ! " 
 
 Busy hands were at the rope about the minister's 
 waist ; they worked slowly, from sheer reluctance 
 to do the deed. Bayard stamped the beach with 
 divine impatience. His head whirled with such 
 exaltation that he scarcely knew who touched him ; 
 he made out to perceive that Ben Trawl was one 
 of the men who offered to tie the bow-line ; he 
 heard the old captain say, shortly : 
 
 " I '11 do it myself ! " 
 
 He thought he heard little Jane Granite cry 
 out ; and that she begged him not to go, " for 
 his people's sake," and that Ben Trawl roughly 
 silenced her. Strangely, the words that he had 
 been reading what ages since ! in the hall in 
 Angel Alley spun through his mind. 
 
 " ' Are you dying for him ? ' she whispered,, 
 And his wife and child. Hush. Yes ! ' " 
 
 So ! This is the " terrible sea ! " This is what 
 drowning means ; this mortal chill, this crashing 
 
122 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 weight upon the lungs, the heart, this fighting for 
 a man's breath, this asphyxia this conflict 
 with wind and water, night and might this being 
 hurled out into chaos, gaining a foot, and losing 
 three this sight of something human yonder hurt- 
 ling towards you on the billow which bears you 
 back from it this struggling on again, and 
 sweeping back, and battling out ! 
 
 Blessing on the " gentleman's muscle," trained 
 in college days to do man's work ! Thanks to the 
 waters of old Charles River and of merry Newport 
 for their unforgotten lessons ! Thank God for 
 that wasted liberal education, yes, and liberal 
 recreation, if it teach the arm, and fire the 
 nerve, and educate the soul to save a drunken 
 sailor now. 
 
 But save ? Can human power save that sodden 
 creature only wit enough left in him to keep 
 afloat and drift, dashing inward on the rocks ? He 
 swirls like a chip. But his cry is the mortal cry of 
 flesh and blood. 
 
 Bayard's strangling lips move : 
 
 " Now Almighty Father, Maker of Heaven and 
 Earth " 
 
 There were mad shouts upon the beach. A 
 score of iron hands held to the line ; and fifty men 
 said to their souls : " That is a hero's deed." 
 Some one flung the rest of the pailful of tar upon 
 the fire, and it blazed up. The swimmer saw the 
 yellow color touch the comber that broke above his 
 head. The rope tightened like the hand of death 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 123 
 
 upon his chest. Caught, perhaps ? Ah, there ! It 
 has grazed the reef, and the teeth of the rock are 
 gnawing at it ; so a mastiff gnaws at the tether of 
 his chained foe, to have the fight out unimpeded. 
 
 " If it cuts through,! am gone," thought Bayard. 
 " And Jesus Christ Thy Son, our Lord and 
 Saviour" 
 
 " Haul in ! Haul in, I say ! Quick ! Haul 
 'em in for life's sake, boys ! She tautens to the 
 weight of two. The parson 's got him ! " 
 
 The old captain jumped up and down on the 
 pebbles like a boy. Wet and glittering, through 
 hands of steel, the line sped in. 
 
 " Does she hold ? Is she cut ? Haul in, haul 
 in, haul in ! " 
 
 The men broke into one of their sudden, natural 
 choruses, moving rhythmically to the measure of 
 their song : 
 
 " Pull for the shore, sailor, 
 Pull for the shore ! " 
 
 As he felt his feet touch bottom, Bayard's strength 
 gave way. Men ran out as far as they could 
 stand in the undertow, and seized and held and 
 dragged some the rescuer, some the rescued ; 
 and so they all came dripping up the beach. 
 
 The rope dropped upon the pebbles cut to a 
 single strand. 
 
 Bayard was with difficulty persuaded to release 
 his rigid clutch from the shoulder of the fisher- 
 man, who fell in a shapeless mass at his preserver's 
 feet. The light of the tar fire flared on the inan's 
 bloated face. It was Job Slip. 
 
124 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 "Where's the other?" asked Bayard faintly 
 " There were two." 
 
 He dimly saw through streams of water, that 
 something else had happened ; that men were run- 
 ning over the rocks and collecting in a cleft, and 
 stooping down to look, and that most of them 
 turned away as soon as they had looked. 
 
 The old woman's was the only quiet figure of 
 them all. She had not left her place upon the 
 cliff, but stood bent and stiff, staring straight 
 ahead. He thought he heard a girl's voice say : 
 
 "Hush! Don't talk so loud. She doesn't 
 know it 's Johnny ; and he 's been battered to 
 jelly on the rocks." 
 
 " Mr. Bayard, sir," said Job, who had crawled 
 up and got as far as his knees, " I was n't wuth it." 
 
 " That 's so," said a candid bystander with an 
 oath. 
 
 " Then be worth it ! " said Bayard in a loud 
 voice. He seemed to have thrown all that re- 
 mained to him of soul and body into those four 
 words ; as he spoke them, he lifted his dripping 
 arms high above his head, as if he appealed from 
 the drunkard to the sky ; then he sank. 
 
 The gentlest hands in the crowd caught him, and 
 the kindest hearts on the coast throbbed when the 
 old captain called : 
 
 "Boys! Stand back! Stir up the fire ! Where's 
 the dry blankets? There's plenty to 'tend to 
 Johnny. Dead folks can bury their dead folks. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 125 
 
 Hurry up them dry clo'es an' that there Jamaiky 
 ginger ! This here 's a livin' man. Just a drop, 
 sir here. I '11 hold ye kinder easy. Can't ? 
 What ? Sho ! . . . Boys, the parson 's hurt." 
 
 At that moment a sound solemn and sinister 
 reverberated from the tower of the Iighthouse 
 The iron lips of the fog bell opened and spoke. 
 
IX. 
 
 CAPTAIN HAP had reached the years when a trip 
 to the Grand Banks is hard work, dory fishing off 
 the coast a doubtful pleasure, and even yachting 
 in an industrial capacity is a burden. He had a 
 quick eye, a kind heart, a soft foot, and the gentle 
 touch strangely enough sometimes to be found in 
 hands that have hauled in the cod-line and the 
 main-sheet for fifty years. In short, Captain Hap 
 made an excellent nurse, and sometimes served his 
 day and generation in that capacity. 
 
 Bayard lay on the straw mattress under the 
 photograph of Leonardo's Christ, and thoughtfully 
 watched Captain Hap. It was the first day that 
 conversation had presented itself to the sick man in 
 the light of a privilege ; and he worked up to the 
 luxury slowly through intervals of delicious silence. 
 
 " Captain Hap, I am quite well now as you 
 see. I must speak next Sunday." . 
 
 " Call it Sunday arter," suggested Captain Hap. 
 
 " It was only a scratch on the head was n't it, 
 Cap'n ? And this cold. It is a bad cold." 
 
 " For a cold, yes, sir ; quite a cold. You see, it 
 anchored onto your lungs ; there air folks that 
 call such colds inflammation. That there cut on 
 the head was a beautiful cut, sir; it healed as 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 127 
 
 healthy as a collie dog's, or a year-old baby's. 
 We '11 have you round, now, sir, before you can 
 sayCap'nHap!" 
 
 "Cap'nHap?" 
 
 "Well, sir?" 
 
 " You 've done something for me I don't know 
 just what; whether it's my life that's saved, or 
 only a big doctor's bill." 
 
 " Ask Mrs. Granite, sir, and that there handy 
 girl of hers ; we 're all in it. You kept the whole 
 crew on deck for a few days. You was a sick man 
 for a spell." 
 
 "Captain, I am a well man now; and there's 
 one thing I will know. I 've asked you before. 
 I 've asked when I was out of my head, and I 've 
 asked when I was in it, and I 've never got an 
 answer yet. Now I 'm going to have it." 
 
 " Be you ? " said Captain Hap. His small, 
 dark, soft eyes twinkled gently ; but they took on 
 lustre of metal across the iris ; as if a spark of iron 
 or flint had hit them. 
 
 " It is time," said Bayard, " that I knew all 
 about it." 
 
 " Meaning " began the captain softly. 
 
 " Meaning everything," said Bayard impatiently . 
 "The whole story. It's the best thing for me, 
 I dream about it so." 
 
 " Yes, I Ve noticed your dreams was bad," re- 
 plied the nurse soothingly. 
 
 " Captain, where 's the Clara Em ? " 
 
 "To the bottom," responded the fisherman 
 cheerfully. 
 
128 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 "And the men? The crew? Her captain? 
 Job Slip ? How many were drowned ? Out with 
 it, Cap'n ! I 'm not very easy to deceive, when 
 I 'm in my senses. You may as well tell me 
 everything." 
 
 " Mebbe I mought," observed the captain. 
 " Sometimes it 's the best way. There was n't but 
 one of 'em drowned, sir, more 's the pity." 
 
 Bayard uttered an exclamation of shocked re- 
 buke and indignation ; but the old captain sat 
 rocking to and fro in Mrs. Granite's best wooden 
 rocking-chair, with the placid expression of those 
 who rest from their labors, and are not afraid that 
 their works should follow them. 
 
 " Fellars that '11 take a new fisherman a reg- 
 ular dandy like that and smash her onto Bagged 
 Rock, bein' in the condition those f ellars were, ain't 
 worth savin' ! " said the seaman severely. " Your 
 treasurer here, J. B. S. Bond, he says last time he 
 come to see you, says he : ' The whole of 'em 
 warn't worth our minister ! ' ! 
 
 " I must speak to Mr. Bond about that," said 
 the young man with a clerical ring in his voice. 
 " It was n't a proper thing for him to say. Who 
 was drowned, Captain Hap ? " 
 
 "Only Johnny," replied the captain indiffer- 
 ently. " He was born drunk, Johnny was : his 
 father was so before him ; and three uncles. He 
 ain't any great loss." 
 
 "Did you see Johnny's mother, Captain, on 
 the cliff, there, that night ? " 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 129 
 
 " I did n't take notice of her particular," replied 
 Captain Hap comfortably. " I see several women 
 round. There 's usually a good many on the 
 rocks, such times." 
 
 "Well, you've got me," said Bayard with a 
 smiling sigh. " I 'm a little too weak to play the 
 parson on you yet, you Christian heathen you 
 stony-hearted minister of mercy ! " 
 
 " Sho ! " said the captain. " 'T ain't fair to call 
 names. I can't hit back ; on a sick man." 
 
 " Very well," said Bayard, sinking back on his 
 thin, small pillows. " Just go ahead and tell me 
 the whole business, then. Where is Job Slip?" 
 
 " Off haddockin'." 
 
 "Sober?" 
 
 " So far. He 's come over here half a dozen 
 times, but the doctor would n't let him up to see 
 you. His wife come, too. That woman, she 'd kiss 
 the popples l underneath your rubber-boots." 
 
 " Where 's Johnny's mother? " 
 
 " They took her to the Widders' Home yester- 
 day. Some of 'em screeches all the way over. 
 Folks say she never said nothing." 
 
 " What became of all those men the crew and 
 captain ? " 
 
 " Why, they waited till ebb, just as I told you. 
 Then they come ashore, the whole twelve on 'em. 
 The crew they come first, and Cap'n Salt that 's 
 Joe Salt he follered after. There was some 
 folks waited round to see 'em off but it come up 
 
 1 Windover for pebbles. 
 
130 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 dreadful thick, spite of the breeze ; so thick it had 
 stems to it. You could n't see the vessel, not a 
 line of her, and 't was kinder cold and disagree'ble. 
 So most the folks went home. But they got 
 ashore, every man-jack of 'em alive." 
 
 " Thank God ! " breathed the sick man. 
 
 " Well," said the captain, " that 's a matter of 
 opinion. You 've talked enough, sir." 
 
 " Just one more, Cap'n Hap ! Just this ! This 
 I 've got to know. What was it exactly 
 that those men did ? How did they come to be in 
 such a plight ? How in the world that beautiful 
 new boat and an intelligent officer at the helm, 
 Captain how on earth did it come about?" 
 
 " The Clara Em was sot to sail," replied Cap- 
 tain Hap calmly. "That's about all. Her 
 owners they were sot, and her cap'n he was sot. 
 It was the sotness done it. They 'd make the mar- 
 ket first, you see, if they got the start and it 's 
 a job gettin' your crew aboard, you know. Any- 
 thing to get your crew. Drunk or sober, that is n't 
 the point. Drunker they be, the easier to ship 
 'em. See ? Get your crew. Get 'em anyhow ! 
 They was all full, every mother's son of 'em. 
 Cap'n Joe, he was the only sober soul aboard, and 
 that 's the truth, and he knew it when he set sail. 
 Yes oh, yes. The storm was comin'. He knew 
 it was breezin' up. Oh, yes, of course. So he 
 got some sober men off the wharves to help him at 
 the sheets, and he put up every stitch. Yes, sir ! 
 Every stitch he had! And out he sails with 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 131 
 
 thirteen drunken men aboard him at the wheel, 
 and not a hand to help him. That 's the English 
 
 on 't. The boat was d drunk, beg your pardon, 
 
 Parson ! He driv right out the harbor, and it was 
 a sou'easter, and blew quite a breeze o' wind, and 
 you see he tacked, and set in, and he was tackin' 
 out, and it had breezed up consider'ble more 9 n he 
 expected. So he drove right on the reef. That 's 
 about it," 
 
 " But why did n't he take in sail ? " 
 
 " How was he goin' to do it with that crew ? 
 Why, he could n't leave the wheel to tie a reef- 
 point." 
 
 " But there was his anchor." 
 
 " Did you ever try to heave one of them big 
 anchors ? It takes four men." 
 
 " What a situation ! Horrible ! " 
 
 "Wall, yes; it was inconvenient him at the 
 wheel, and a dead drunk crew, thirteen of 'em, be- 
 low. Why, they was too drunk to know whether 
 they drowned or not." 
 
 " Can the boat be raised ? Will she ever be 
 good for anything? " 
 
 " Kindlin' wood," remarked the captain dryly. 
 
 " Captain Hap," asked Bayard feebly, " do 
 things like this often happen? " 
 
 " Sometimes." 
 
 " Is n't this an extreme case ? " 
 
 " Well, it don't happen every day." 
 
 " But things of this kind do they occur often ? 
 Do you know of other cases ? " 
 
132 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Windover don't have the monopoly of 'em by 
 no means," mused Captain Hap. " There was the 
 Daredevil over on South Shore. She was launched 
 about a year ago. She went on a trial spin one 
 day, and everybody aboard was pretty jolly. They 
 put all their canvas up to show her off. It was a 
 nor'wester that day, and they driv her right be- 
 fore the wind. She jest plunged bows down, and 
 driv straight to the bottom, the Daredevil did. 
 Some said it was he.r name. But, Lord, rum 
 done it." 
 
 "What do people say how do they take it 
 here in Windover, this case of the Clara Em ? 
 Were n't they indignant ? " 
 
 " Wall, the insurance folks was mad." 
 
 " No, but the people the citizens the Chris- 
 tian people how do they feel about it ? " 
 
 " Oh, they 're used to it," said Captain Hap. 
 
 Bayard turned wearily on his hard bed. He did 
 not answer. He looked out and towards the sea. 
 The engraved Guide over the study-table between 
 the little windows regarded him. St. Michael was 
 fighting with his dragon still. 
 
 "He never got wounded," thought the sick 
 man. 
 
 "Captain," he said presently, "these rooms 
 seem to be full of pleasant things. Who sent 
 them all?" 
 
 " Them geraniums and other greens ? Oh, the 
 ladies 'of the mission, every mother's daughter of 
 'em, married and single, young an' old. Jellies? 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 133 
 
 Lord ! Yes. Jellies enough to stock a branch 
 grocery. What there is in the female mind, come 
 to sickness, that takes it out in jellies" mused 
 the captain. 
 
 " I 've taken solid comfort out of this screen,'* 
 said Bayard gratefully. "I did suffer with the 
 light before. Who sent that ? " 
 
 " That 's Jane Granite's idee," replied the cap- 
 tain. " She seems to be a clever girl. Took an 
 old clo'es-horse and some rolls of wall paper 
 they had in the house. They give fifteen cents a 
 roll for that paper. It 's kinder tasty, don't you 
 think ? 'Specially that cherubim with blue wings 
 settin' on a basket of grapes." 
 
 " That reminds me. I see some Hamburg 
 grapes," said Bayard, with the indifferent air of a 
 man who purposely puts his vital question last. 
 He pointed to a heaping dish of hothouse fruit 
 and other delicacies never grown in Windover. 
 
 The captain replied that those come from the 
 Boston gentleman ; they 'd kept coming all along. 
 He thought she said there was a card to 'em by 
 the name of 
 
 "Worcester?" asked the sick man eagerly 
 
 That was it. Worcester. 
 
 " He has n't been here, has he ? The gentleman 
 has n't called to see me ? " 
 
 The nurse shook his head, and Bayard turned 
 his own away. He would not have believed that 
 his heart would have leaped like that at such a 
 little thing. He felt like a sick boy, sore and 
 
134 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 homesick with the infinite longing for the love of 
 kin. It was something to know that he was not 
 utterly forgotten. He asked for one of the Boston 
 pears, and ate it with pathetic eagerness. 
 
 " There 's been letters," said the captain ; " but 
 the doctor's orders are agin your seeing 'em this 
 week. There 's quite a pile. You see, its bein' in 
 the papers let folks know." 
 
 " In the papers ! What in the papers ? " 
 
 " What do you s'pose ? " asked the captain 
 proudly. " A fellar don't swim out in the under- 
 tow off Ragged Rock to save a d fool of a 
 
 drunken fisherman every day." 
 
 " I '11 be split and salted ! " added the fisher- 
 man-nurse, " if we did n't have to have a watch- 
 man here three nights when you was worst, to 
 keep the reporters off ye. Thirteen Windover 
 fellars volunteered for the job, and they would n't 
 none of 'em take a cent for it. They said they 'd 
 set up forty nights for you." 
 
 " For me?" whispered the sick man. His eyes 
 filled for the first time since the Clara Em went 
 ashore on Ragged Rock. Something new and 
 valuable seemed to have entered life as suddenly 
 as the comfort of kin and the support of friends, 
 and that bright, inspiriting atmosphere, which one 
 calls the world, had gone from him. He had not 
 expected that precious thing the love of those 
 for whom we sacrifice ourselves. He felt the first 
 thrill of it with gratitude touching to think of, 
 in so young and lovable a man, with life and 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 135 
 
 all its brilliant and beautiful possibilities before 
 him. 
 
 It was an April night, and sea and sky were 
 soft in Wind over. 
 
 A stranger stood in Angel Alley hesitating at a 
 door, which bore above its open welcome these 
 seven words : 
 
 " THE CHURCH OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST." 
 
 " What goes on here ? " the gentleman asked of 
 a bystander. 
 
 " Better things than ever went on here before," 
 was the reply. " They 've got a man up there. 
 He ain't no dummy in a minister's choker." 
 
 The stranger put another question. 
 
 " Well," came the cordial answer, " he has sev- 
 eral names in Angel Alley : fisherman's friend is 
 one of the most poplar. Some calls him the 
 gospel cap'n. There 's those that prefers jest to 
 say, the new minister. There 's one name he 
 don't go by very often, and that 's the Reverend 
 Bayard." 
 
 " He has no right to the title," murmured the 
 stranger. 
 
 " What 's that ? " interposed the other quickly. 
 The stranger made no reply. 
 
 "Some call him the Christ's Rest man," pro- 
 ceeded the bystander affably. 
 
 " That is a singular ah remarkable cogno- 
 men. How comes that ? " 
 
136 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Why, you see, the old name for this place was 
 Seraph's Eest it was the wust hell in Angel 
 Alley see ? before he took it up an' sot to 
 pray in' in it. So folks got it kinder mixed with 
 the Love of Christ up on that sign there. Some 
 calls the place Christlove for short. I heerd an 
 I-talian call him the Christman t' other day." 
 
 The stranger took off his hat by instinct, it 
 seemed unconsciously; glanced at the inscription 
 above the door, and passed thoughtfully up the 
 steep, bare stairs into the hall or room of worship. 
 
 The service was already in progress, for the 
 hour was late, and the gentleman observed with 
 an air of surprise that the place was filled. He 
 looked about for a comfortable seat, but was 
 forced to content himself with standing-room in 
 the extreme rear of the hall. Crowds overflowed 
 the wooden settees, brimmed into the aisles, and 
 were packed, in serried rows as tight as codfish 
 in a box, against the wall. The simile of the 
 cod was forced upon the visitor's mind in more 
 senses than one. A strong whiff of salt fish as- 
 sailed him on every side. This was varied by 
 reminiscences of glue factories, taking unmistak- 
 able form. An expression of disgust crossed the 
 stranger's face ; 'it quickly changed into that ab- 
 straction which indicates the presence of moral 
 emotion too great for attention to trifles. 
 
 The usual New England religious audience was 
 not to be seen in the Church of the Love of 
 Christ in Angel Alley. The unusual, plainly, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 137 
 
 was. The wealth and what the "-Windover Top- 
 sail" called the society of Windover were sparsely 
 represented on those hard settees. The clean, 
 sober faces of respectable families were out in 
 good force ; these bore the earnest, half -perplexed, 
 wholly pathetic expression of uninfluential citizens 
 who find themselves suddenly important to and 
 responsible for an unpopular movement ; a class 
 of people who do not get into fiction or history, 
 and who deserve a quality of respect and sympathy 
 which they do not receive ; the kind of person who 
 sets us to wondering what was the personal view 
 of the situation dully revolving in the minds of 
 Peter and the sons of Zebedee when they put 
 their nets to dry upon the shores of Galilee, and 
 tramped up and down Palestine at the call of a 
 stronger and diviner mind, wondering what it 
 meant, and how it would all end. 
 
 These good people, not quite certain whether 
 their own reputations were injured or bettered by 
 the fact, sat side by side with men and women who 
 are not known to the pews of churches. The 
 homeless were there, and the hopeless, the sinning, 
 the miserable, the disgraced, the neglected, the 
 " rats " of the wharves, and the outcasts of the 
 dens. 
 
 The stranger stood packed in, elbow to elbow 
 between an Italian who served the country of his 
 adoption upon the town waterworks, and a dark- 
 browed Portuguese sailor. American fishermen, 
 washed and shaven, in their Sunday clothes, filled 
 
138 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 the rear seats. Against the wall, lines of rude, red 
 faces crowded like cattle at a spring ; men of the 
 sea and the coast, men without homes or charac- 
 ters ; that uninteresting and dangerous class which 
 we dismiss in two idle words as the "floating 
 population." Some of these men were sober; 
 some were not ; others were hovering midway be- 
 tween the two conditions : all were orderly, and 
 a few were listening with evidences of emotion 
 to the hymn, in which by far the greater portion 
 of the audience joined. A girl wearing a Tarn 
 o' Shanter and a black fur cape, and singing in a 
 fine, untrained contralto, held her hymn-book over 
 the settee to the Italian. 
 
 " Come, Tony ! Pass it along ! " she whispered, 
 " I can get on without it. Make 'em pile in and 
 sing along the wall, there ! " 
 
 With rude and swelling cadence the fishermen 
 sang : 
 
 " I need Thee every hour, 
 Most gracious Lord." 
 
 Their voices and their hearts rose high on one of 
 those plaintive popular melodies of which music 
 need never be ashamed : 
 
 " I need Thee, oh, I need Thee, 
 
 Every hour I need Thee ; 
 Oh, bless me now, my Saviour "... 
 
 The stranger, who had the appearance of a re- 
 ligious man, joined in the chorus heartily; he 
 shared the book which the girl had given to the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 139 
 
 Italian, who came in a bar too late, and closed the 
 stanza on a shrill solo, 
 
 " I co home to thee." 
 
 This little accident excited a trifling smile ; but 
 it faded immediately, for the preacher had arisen. 
 His appearance was greeted with a respect which 
 surprised the stranger. The audience at once 
 became grave even to reverence; the Italian 
 cuffed a drunken Portuguese who was under the 
 impression that responses to the service were 
 expected of him ; the girl in the Tarn o' Shanter 
 shook a woman who giggled beside her. A fisher- 
 man whispered loudly, 
 
 " Shut up there ! The parson ain't quite tough 
 yet. Keep it quiet for him ! Shut up there, along 
 the wall ! " 
 
 There is nothing like a brave deed to command 
 the respect of seafaring men. Emanuel Bayard, 
 when he plunged into the undertow after Job Slip's 
 drunken, drowning body, swam straight into the 
 heart of Windover. A rough heart that is, but a 
 warm one, none warmer on the freezing coast, and 
 sea-going Windo^r had turned the sunny side of 
 its nature, and taken the minister in. The standards 
 by which ignorant men judge the superior classes 
 their superb indifference to any scale of values 
 but their own deserve more study than they 
 receive. 
 
 It had never occurred to Bayard, who was only 
 beginning to learn to understand the nature of 
 
140 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 his material, that he had become in three weeks 
 the hero of the wharves and the docks, the ro 
 mance of Angel Alley, the admiring gossip of 
 the Banks and Georges', the pride and wonder 
 of the Windover fishermen. Quite unconscious of 
 this " sea-change," wrought by one simple, manly 
 act upon his popularity, he rose to address the 
 people. His heart was full of what he was going 
 to say. He gave one glance the length of the 
 hall. He saw the crowds packed by the door. He 
 saw the swaying nets, ornamented with globes 
 and shells and star-fish, after the fashion of the 
 fishing-town ; these decorations softened the bare 
 walls of the audience-room. He saw the faces of 
 the fishermen lifting themselves to him and blur- 
 ring together in a gentle glow. They seemed to 
 him, as a great preacher once said of his audience, 
 like the face " of one impressive, pleading man," 
 whose life hung upon his words. He felt as if he 
 must weigh them in some divine scales into which 
 no dust or chaff of weakness or care for self could 
 fall. 
 
 Something of this high consciousness crept into 
 his face. He stood for a moment silent ; his beau- 
 tiful countenance, thin from recent suffering, took 
 on the look by which a man represses noble tears 
 
 Suddenly, before he had spoken a word, a storm 
 of applause burst out shook the room from wall 
 to wall and roared like breakers under his 
 astonished feet. He turned pale with emotion, 
 but the fishermen thundered on. He was still so 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 141 
 
 weak that this reception almost overcame him, and 
 involuntarily he stretched out both his hands. At 
 the gesture the noise sank instantly ; and silence, 
 in which the sigh of the saddest soul in the room 
 might have been heard, received the preacher. 
 
 His sensitive face, melted and quivering, shone 
 down upon them tenderly. Men in drunken 
 brawls, and men in drowning seas, and women in 
 terrible temptation, remembered how he looked 
 that night when the safe and the virtuous and the 
 comfortable had forgotten. 
 
 The stranger back by the door put his hat 
 before his face. 
 
THE preacher began to speak with a quietness 
 in almost startling contrast to his own evident 
 emotion, and to the excitement in the audience 
 room. He made no allusion to the fact that this 
 was his first appearance among his people since 
 the wreck of the Clara Em, and the all but mor- 
 tal illness which had followed his personal share 
 in that catastrophe. Quite in his usual manner 
 he conducted his Sunday evening service ; a simple 
 religious talk varied by singing, and a few words 
 from the New Testament. Bayard never read 
 "chapters;" a phrase sufficed, a narrative or a 
 maxim : sometimes he stopped at a single verse. 
 The moment that the fishermen's eyes wandered, 
 the book closed. It was his peculiarity that he 
 never allowed the Bible to bore his listeners ; he 
 trained them to vahie it by withholding it until 
 they did.) It was long remembered of him among 
 the people of the coast that he made use of public 
 prayer with a reserve and a power entirely un- 
 known to the pulpits and the vestries. The 
 ecclesiastical " long prayer " was never heard in 
 Angel Alley. Bayard's prayers were brief, and 
 few. He prayed audibly before his people only 
 when he could not help it. It seemed sometimes 
 as if his heart broke in the act. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 143 
 
 On this evening, no prayer had as yet passed 
 his lips ; the stranger, with a slight frown, noticed 
 this fact. But now, the preacher brushed aside 
 his notes, arid, clearing the desk, crossed his hands 
 upon it, and leaned forward with a marked change 
 of manner. Suddenly, without a hint of his pur- 
 pose, the young minister's gentle voice rose into the 
 tones of solemn arraignment. 
 
 " I came here," he said, " a stranger to this town 
 and to its customs. It has taken me all this while 
 to learn what your virtues and your vices are. I 
 have dealt with you gently, preaching comfortable 
 truths as I have been expected to preach them. I 
 have worked in ignorance. I have spoken soft 
 words. Now I speak them no more! Your sin 
 and your shame have entered like iron into my 
 soul. People of Windover ! I accuse you in the 
 name of Christ, whose minister I am ! " 
 
 The expression of affectionate reverence with 
 which his audience had listened to Bayard up to 
 this moment now changed into a surprise that re- 
 sembled fear. Before he had spoken ten words 
 more, it became evident that the young preacher 
 was directing the full force of his conscience and 
 his intelligence to a calm and deliberate attack 
 upon the liquor habit and the liquor traffic one 
 of the last of the subjects (as it is well known) 
 conceded to be the business of a clergyman to 
 meddle with in any community, and the very last 
 which Windover had been trained to hear her- 
 self held to account for by her clerical teachers. 
 
144 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 At the hour when he came nearest to the adoration 
 of those who adore without thought, when they 
 saw him through the mist of romance, when the 
 people, carried on a wave of hero-worship, lay for 
 the first time at his feet, Bayard for the first time 
 opened fire upon their favorite sin. 
 
 Shot after shot poured down from those deli- 
 cate, curving lips. Broadside followed broadside, 
 and still the fire fell. He captured for them the 
 elusive statistics of the subject; he confronted 
 them with its appalling facts ; he pelted them with 
 incidents such as the soul sickens to relate or to 
 remember. He denied them the weak consolation 
 of condoning in themselves a moral disease too well 
 known to be the vice of the land, and of the times. 
 He scored them with rebuke under which his lead- 
 ing men grew pale with alarm. Nothing could 
 have been more unlike the conventional temper- 
 ance address, yet nothing could have been more 
 simple, manly, reasonable, and fearless. 
 
 " For every prayer that goes up to God from 
 this room," he said, " for every hymn, for every sa- 
 cred word and vow of purity, for every longing of 
 a man's heart to live a noble life, there open fifty 
 dens of shame upon this street to blast him. We 
 are pouring holy oil upon a sea of mud. That is 
 not good religion, and it is not good sense. We 
 must prove our right to represent the Christian 
 religion in Angel Alley. We must close its dens, 
 or they ought to close our lips. I am ready to 
 try," hs added with his winning simplicity, "if 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 145 
 
 you are, I shall need your help and your advice, 
 for I am not educated in these matters as I ought 
 to be. I was not taught how to save drunken men 
 in the schools where clergymen are trained. I 
 must learn now we must learn together as 
 best we can. . . . Oh, my people ! " His voice 
 passed from the tone of loving entreaty into that of 
 prayer; by one of those moving transformations 
 peculiar to himself, wherein those who heard him 
 scarce could tell the moment when he ceased to 
 speak to men and began to talk with God. 
 
 " People of the Church of the Love of Christ ! 
 Approach God, for He is close at heart. . . . 
 Thou great God! Holy, Almighty, Merciful!- 
 Make us know how to deal with sin, in our own 
 souls, and in the lives of others. For the' sake 
 of Thy Son whose Name we dare to bear. Amen." 
 
 As the words of this outcry, this breath of the 
 spirit, rose and ceased, the silence in the room was 
 something so profound that a girl's sigh was heard 
 far back by the door. 
 
 The hush was stung by a long, low., sibilant 
 sound ; a single hiss insulted that sacred stillness. 
 Then a man purple to the brows, rose and went 
 out. It was old Trawl, whose saloon had been a 
 landmark in Angel Alley for fifty years. 
 
 The stranger, who had been more moved than 
 It seemed he cared to show by what he had heard 
 and seen, passed slowly with the crowd down the 
 long stairs, and reached the outer air. As the 
 salt wind struck in his face, a hand was laid upo& 
 
146 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 his shoulder. The young minister, looking pale 
 and tired, but enviably calm, drew the visitor's 
 hand through his arm. 
 
 " I saw you, Fenton," he said quietly, " when 
 you first came in. You '11 come straight to my 
 lodgings with me. . . . Won't you?" he added 
 wistfully, fancying that Fenton hesitated. " You 
 can't know how much it will mean to me. I 
 have n't seen anybody why, I have n't seen a 
 fellow since I came to Windover." 
 
 " You must lead rather an isolated life, I should 
 think," observed Fenton with some embarrass- 
 ment, as the two stood to hail the electric car that 
 ran by Mrs. Granite's humble door. 
 
 " We '11 talk when we get there," replied Bayard, 
 rather shortly for him. " The car will be full of 
 people," he added apologetically. " One lives in 
 a glass bell here. Besides, I 'm a bit tired." 
 
 He looked, indeed, exhausted, as the electric light 
 smote his thin face ; his eyes glowed like fire fed 
 by metal, and his breath came short. He leaned 
 his head back against the car window. 
 
 "You cough, I see," said Fenton, who was not 
 an expert in silence. 
 
 "Do I ? Perhaps. I had n't thought of it." 
 He said nothing more until they had reached his 
 lodgings. Fenton began to talk about the wreck 
 and the rescue. He said the usual things in the 
 usual way, offering, perforce, the tribute of a man 
 to a manly deed. 
 
 Bayard nodded politely; he would not talk 
 about it. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 147 
 
 Jane Granite opened the door for them. She 
 looked at the minister with mute, dog-like misery 
 in her young eyes. 
 
 " You look dead beat out, sir," she said. But 
 Ben Trawl stood scowling in the door of the sit= 
 ting-room ; he had not chosen to go to the service, 
 nor to allow her to go without him. Jane thought 
 it was religious experience that made this such a 
 disappointment to her. 
 
 44 Ah, Trawl," said the minister heartily, "I'm 
 glad to see you here." 
 
 He did not say, " I am sorry you were not at 
 church," as Ben Trawl pugnaciously expected. 
 
 Bayard led his guest upstairs, and shut and 
 locked the study door. 
 
 " There ! " he said faintly. " Now, George 
 Fenton, talk ! Tell me all about ito You can't 
 think how I am going to enjoy this ! I wish I 
 had an easy-chair for you. Will this rocker do ? 
 If you don't mind, I think I '11 just lie down a 
 minute." 
 
 He flung himself heavily upon the old carpet- 
 covered lounge. Fenton drew up the wooden 
 rocking-chair to the cylinder stove, in which a low 
 fire glimmered, and put his feet on top of the stove, 
 after the manner of Cesarea and Galilee Hall. 
 
 " Well," he began, in his own comfortable way, 
 11 1 've accepted the call." 
 
 "I supposed you would," replied Bayard, 
 " when I heard it was under way. I am glad of 
 it ! " he said cordially. " The First Church is a 
 
148 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 fine old churcL You 're just the man for tteir , 
 They '11 ordain you as easily as they swallow their 
 native chowders. You came right over from 
 their evening service to our place to-night? You 
 must have hurried." 
 
 " I did," said the guest, with a certain air of 
 condescension. " I wanted to hear you, you know 
 once, at least." 
 
 " When you are settled, you can't come, of 
 course," observed Bayard quickly. " I understand 
 that." 
 
 " Well you see I shall be you know 
 in a very delicate position, when I become the 
 pastor of that church." 
 
 Fenton's natural complacency forsook him for 
 the instant, and something like embarrassment 
 rested upon his easy face ; he showed it by the way 
 he handled Mrs. Granite's poker. 
 
 " It 's 72 in this room already," suggested Bay- 
 ard, smiling. " Would you poke that fire any 
 more ? . . . Oh, come, Fenton ! I understand. 
 Don't bother your head about me, or how I may 
 feel. A man does n't choose to be where I am, to 
 waste life in considering his feeling's; those are 
 the least important items in his natural history* 
 Just stick to your subject, man. It 's you I want 
 to hear about." 
 
 " Well," replied the guest, warming to the 
 theme with natural enthusiasm, "the call was 
 unanimous. Perfectly so," 
 
 " That must be delightful." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 149 
 
 " Why, so it is it is, as you say. delightful. 
 And the salary they 've raised the salary to get 
 me, Bayard. You see it had got out that I had 
 refused ah hum several calls. And they 'd 
 been without a man so long, I fancy they 're tired 
 of it. Anyhow, I 'm to have three thousand 
 dollars." 
 
 " That is delightful too," said Bayard cordially. 
 He turned over on his old lounge, coughing, and 
 doubled the thin, cretonne pillow under his head ; 
 he watched his class-mate with a half-quizzical 
 smile ; his eyes and brow were perfectly serene. 
 
 "I shall be ordained immediately," continued 
 Fenton eagerly, " and bring my wife. They are 
 refitting the parsonage. I went in last night to 
 see that the carpets and papers and all that were 
 what they should be. I am going to be married 
 Bayard, I am going to be married next week." 
 
 " And that is best of all," said Bayard in a low 
 voice. 
 
 " She is really a lovely girl," observed Fenton, 
 " though somewhat limited in her experience, 
 I Ve known her all my life where I came from, 
 in the western part of the State. But I think 
 these gentle, country girls make the best min- 
 isters' wives. They educate up to the position 
 rapidly." 
 
 Bayard made no answer to this scintillation ; a 
 spark shot over his soft and laughing eyes; but 
 his, lips opened only to say, after a perceptible 
 pause, 
 
150 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 "Where is Tompkinton he of the long legs 
 and the army cape ? " 
 
 " Settled somewhere near you, I hear ; over 
 across the Cape. He has a fine parish. He 's to 
 have two thousand that 's doing well for a man 
 of his stamp." 
 
 " I don't think Tompkinton is the kind of man 
 to think much about the salary," observed Bayard 
 gravely. " He struck me as the other sort of 
 fellow. What 's become of Bent ? " 
 
 "Graduates this summer, I suppose. I hear 
 he's called to Roxbury. He always aimed at a 
 Boston parish. He's sure to boom." 
 
 "And that brakeman Holt? He who ad- 
 mired Huxley's ' Descent of Man ' ? " 
 
 " Oh, he is slumming in New York city. They 
 say he is really very useful. He has some sort of 
 mission work, there, at the Five Points. I 'in told 
 he makes a specialty of converted burglars." 
 
 " I have n't been able to follow any of the 
 boys," said Bayard, coughing. " I can't very 
 well as I am situated. It does me good to hear 
 something about somebody. Where 's that round 
 fellow Jaynes ? With the round glasses ? I 
 remember he always ate two Baldwins, two en 
 tire Baldwin apples." 
 
 " Gone West, I believe. He 's admirably 
 adapted to the West," replied Fenton, settling his 
 chair in his old comfortable way. 
 
 " What an assorted lot we were ! " said Bayard 
 dreamily. " And what a medley we were taught I 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 151 
 
 I haven't opened one of my note-books since I 
 came here." 
 
 " Oh, in your work," said Fenton, " you don't 
 need to read, I should think." 
 
 Bayard's eyes sought his library ; rested lov- 
 ingly on its full and well-used shelves ; then 
 turned away with the expression of one who says 
 to a chosen friend : " We understand. Why 
 need anything be said ? " He did not otherwise 
 reply. 
 
 " Were you ever ordained over your present 
 charge?" asked his visitor suddenly, balancing 
 the poker on the top curl of the iron angel that 
 ornamented the cylinder stove. "How did you 
 manage it? Did any of the regular clergy 
 recognize the affair ? " 
 
 " I was not ordained," replied Bayard, smiling 
 contentedly. " I sought nothing of the kind. But 
 a few of the country ministers wished us God- 
 speed. There was one dear old man he was my 
 moderator at that Council he came over and put 
 his hands on my head, and gave me the blessing,," 
 
 " Oh the charge to the pastor ? " 
 
 " We did n't call it that. We did not steal 
 any of the old phrases. He prayed and blessed 
 me, that was all. He is a sincere, good man, and 
 he made something impressive out of it, my people 
 said. At all events they were satisfied. We 
 have to do things in our own way, you know, 
 We are experimenting, of course." 
 
 "I should say that was a pretty serious experi< 
 
152 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 ment you inaugurated to-night in your service. 
 If you '11 allow me to say so, I should call it very 
 ill-advised." 
 
 " It is a serious experiment," replied Bayard 
 gravely. 
 
 "Expect to succeed in it ? " 
 
 " God knows." 
 
 " Bound to go on with it ? " 
 
 " Till I succeed or fail." 
 
 " What do you propose ? To turn temperance 
 lecturer, and that sort of thing? I suppose 
 you'll be switching off your religious services 
 into prohibition caucuses, and so forth." 
 
 " I propose nothing of the kind. I am not a 
 politician. I am a preacher of the Christian re- 
 ligion." 
 
 " I always knew you were eccentric, of course, 
 Bayard. Everybody knows that. But I never 
 expected to see you leading such a singular life. 
 I never took you for this sort of fanatic. It 
 seems so common for a man of your taste and 
 culture, and there can be no doubt that it is un- 
 wise, from every point of view, even from your 
 own, I should think. I don't deny that your work 
 impressed me, what I saw of it to-night. Your 
 gifts tell even here. It is a pity to have them 
 misapplied. Now, what was your motive in that 
 outbreak 'to-night ? I take it, it was the first time 
 you had tackled the subject." 
 
 "To my shame yes. It was the first timec 
 JL have had reasons to look into it, lately that 'a 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 153 
 
 all. You see, my ignorance on the subject was 
 colossal, to start in. We were not taught such 
 things in the Seminary. Cesarea does as well as 
 any of them but no curriculum recognizes Job 
 Slip. t Oh, when I think about it ! Predestina- 
 tion, foreordination, sanctification, election, and 
 botheration, and never a lesson on the Chris- 
 tian socialism of our day, not a lecture to tell 
 us how to save a poor, lost woman, how to reform 
 a drunkard, what to do with gamblers and pau- 
 pers and thieves, and worse, how to apply what 
 we believe to common life and common sense 
 how to lift miserable creatures, scrambling up, 
 and falling back into the mud as fast as they can 
 scramble people of no religion, no morals, no 
 decency, no hope, no joy who never see the 
 inside of a church " 
 
 "They ought to," replied Fenton severely. 
 " That 's their fault, not ours. And all seminaries 
 have a course on Pastoral Theology." 
 
 " I visited sixteen of the dens of this town this 
 last week," replied Bayard. "I took a policeman, 
 and went through the whole thing. I don't blame 
 them. I would n't go to church if I were they. 
 I shall dream about what I saw I don't know 
 that I shall ever stop dreaming about it. It is too 
 horrible to tell. I would n't even speak what I 
 saw men and women live. The old sailors who 
 have seen a good many ports, call it a hell of a 
 town. My own idea is, that it is n't a particle 
 worse than other places of its class. I fancy it 's a 
 
154 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 fair, average seaport town. Six thousand seamen 
 sail this harbor every year. I can't get at the 
 number of dens they support ; such figures are 
 runaway lunatics, you understand; they have a 
 genius for hiding ; and . nobody wants to find 
 them. But put it low call it two hundred in 
 this little town. If it isn't the business of a 
 Christian church to shut them whose is it ? If 
 it is n't the business of religious people to look 
 after these fellows whose is it ? I say, religious 
 people are answerable for them, and for their vices ! 
 I The best people are responsible for the worst,) or 
 there 's no meaning in the New Testament, and 
 no sense in the Christian religion. Oh," said 
 Bayard, with a sound that was more like a moan 
 than a sigh, " if Christ could come into Angel 
 Alley j us t this one street! If He could take 
 'this .little piece of a worldful of human woe 
 modern human misery, you understand, all the 
 new forms and phases that Palestine knew nothing 
 about if He could sweep it clean, and show us 
 how to do it now ! Think, Fenton, think, how He 
 would go to work what that would be! . . . 
 sometimes I think it would be worth dying for." 
 
 " It strikes me it is harder to guess than predes- 
 tination, what He would do if He were reincar- 
 nated," replied Fenton gravely. 
 
 " It had not struck me so," answered Bayard 
 gently, " but there may be something in that." 
 
 " Now," continued Fenton, " take yourself. 1 
 fancy you believe Do you suppose you are 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 155 
 
 doing the kind of thing He would set about, if 
 He were in your place ? " 
 
 " How can I tell ? " replied Bayard in a voice 
 so low that it was scarcely articulate. " How can a 
 man know ? All I do know is, that I try. That 
 is what and that is all I try to do. And I 
 shall keep on trying, till I die." 
 
 He spoke with a solemnity which admitted of 
 no light response, even from a worldly man. 
 Fenton was not that, and his eyes filled. 
 
 " Well," he said, after a silence, " you are 
 a good man, Emanuel Bayard. God go with 
 you." 
 
 " And with you," replied Bayard, holding out 
 his hand. " Our roads lie different ways. We 
 shall not talk like this again." 
 
 "You won't mind that? You won't feel it," 
 said Fenton uncomfortably, for he had risen to 
 leave, and the conversation hung heavily on his 
 heart, " if I don't run across your way, often ? 
 It would hardly do, you see. My people the 
 church the circumstances " 
 
 He brought the poker down hard upon the cere- 
 brum of the iron angel, who resented the insult 
 by tumbling over on the funnel ; thence, with a 
 slam, to the floor. Fenton picked up the ornament 
 with a red face, and restored it to its place. He 
 felt, as a man sometimes does, more rebuked than 
 irritated by the inanimate thing. 
 
 " Good-by," said Bayard gently. It was all he 
 said. He still held out his hand. His classmate 
 
156 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 wrung it, and passed, with bowed head, from his 
 presence. 
 
 The happy weather held over into the next day ; 
 and the harbor wore her celestial smile. The 
 gentleness of summer clothed in the colors of 
 spring rested upon the wooded coast beyond the 
 long cliff-outline, upon the broken scallops of the 
 beaches, and the moss-green piers of the docks, 
 upon the waves swelling without foam, and the 
 patched sails of the anchored fleet unfurled to 
 dry. The water still held the blue and gray tints 
 that betoken cold weather too recently past or too 
 soon returning to be forgotten. But the wind was 
 south ; and the saxifrage was in bud upon the 
 downs in the clefts of the broken rocks between 
 the boulders. 
 
 Bayard was a weak and weary man that day, 
 the events of the previous evening had told upon 
 him more than he would have supposed possible, 
 and he gave himself a luxury. He put the world 
 and the evil of it from his heart and brain, and 
 went out on Windover Point, to sun himself, 
 alone ; crawling along, poor fellow, at a sad pace, 
 stopping often to rest, and panting as he pushed 
 on. He had been an athletic lad, a vigorous, 
 hearty man ; illness and its subtle train of physi- 
 cal and mental consequences spoke in the voices of 
 strangers to him. 
 
 " They will pass on," he thought. 
 
 Bayard was such a lovable, cordial, human 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 157 
 
 that the isolation of his life in Windover had 
 affected him more than it might have done a 
 natural recluse. Solitude is the final test of char- 
 acter as well as of nature. 
 
 The romance of consecration has its glamour 
 as well as the romance of love. Bayard had felt 
 his way into this beautiful mist with a stout, good 
 sense which is rare in the devotee, and which was 
 perhaps his most remarkable quality. This led 
 him to accept without fruitless resistance a lot 
 which was pathetically alien to him. He was no 
 gray-bearded saint, on whose leathern tongue joy 
 had turned to ashes ; to whom renunciation was 
 the last throw left in the game of life. He was 
 a young man, ardent, eager, buoyant, confiding in 
 hope because he had not tested it ; believing in 
 happiness because he had not known it ; full of 
 untried, untamed capacity for human delight, and 
 with the instinct (generations old) of a luxurious 
 training toward human ease. He had cut the 
 silken cords between himself and the world of his 
 old habits, ambitions, and friends with a steady 
 stroke; he had smitten the soft network like a 
 man, and flung it from him like a spirit ; but there 
 were hours when he felt as if he were bleeding to 
 death, inwardly, from sheer desolation. 
 
 "That call of George Fenton's upset me last 
 night," he said aloud, as he sank down at the base 
 of a big boulder in the warm sand. He sometimes 
 talked to the sea ; nothing else in Windover could 
 understand him; he was acquiring some of the 
 
158 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 habits of lonely people who live apart from theii 
 own class. How impossible it would have been in 
 Cambridge, in Boston, or in Cesarea to be caught 
 talking aloud ! /His pale face flushed, and he 
 drew his hat over it, thanking Heaven that rocks 
 were deaf and the downs were dumb, that the sun 
 would never tell, and the harbor was too busy to 
 listen* } He had lain there in the sand for some 
 time, as motionless as a mollusk at low water. 
 
 " All a man needs is a little common rest," he 
 thought. The April sun seemed to sink into his 
 brain and heart with the healing touch that no- 
 thing human ever gives. He pushed his hat away 
 from his face, and looked up gratefully, as if he 
 had been caressed. 
 
 As he did so, he heard footsteps upon the crisp, 
 red-cupped moss that surrounded the base of the 
 boulder. He rose instinctively, and confronted a 
 woman a lady. She had been walking far and 
 fast, and had glorious color. The skirt of her 
 purple gown was splashed with little sticks and 
 burrs and bits of moss; her hands were full of 
 saxifrage. She was trying in the rising wind to 
 hold a sun-umbrella over her head, for she wore 
 the street or traveling dress of the town, and her 
 little bonnet gave her as much protection from the 
 sun as a purple butterfly whose wings were dashed 
 with gold. 
 
 Oddly enough, he recognized the costume before 
 he did the wearer; so incredible did he find it 
 that she should stand there living, glowing, laugh- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 159 
 
 ing, a sumptuous beauty, stamped against the 
 ascetic sky of Windover. 
 
 "Fow/" he cried. 
 
 "Oh, I did not expect I did not think" 
 she stammered. He had never seen Helen Car^ 
 ruth disconcerted. But she blushed like a school^ 
 girl when she gave him, saxifrage and all, her 
 ungloved hand. 
 
XL 
 
 " MOTHER sent me ! I came down for her and 
 father ! " began Helen Carruth abruptly. Then 
 she thought how that sounded as if she need be 
 supposed to apologize for or explain the circum- 
 stance that she happened to find one of her father's 
 old students sunning himself upon a given portion 
 of the New England coast ; and she blushed again. 
 When she saw the sudden, upward motion of Bay- 
 ard's heavy eyelids, she could have set her pretty 
 teeth through her tongue, for vexation at her 
 little faux pas. From sheer embarrassment, sbe 
 laughed it off. 
 
 "I haven't heard anybody laugh like that 
 since I came to Windover," said Bayard, drawing 
 a long breath. " Do give me an encore ! " 
 
 " Now, then, you are laughing at me I " 
 
 " Upon the word of a poor heretic parson no. 
 You can't think how it sounds. It sinks in like 
 the sun." 
 
 " But I don't feel like laughing any more. I 've 
 got all over it. I 'm afraid I can't oblige you." 
 
 " Why not ? You used to be good-natured, I 
 thought in Cesarea, ages ago." 
 
 " You are enough to drive the laugh out of a 
 faun," said the young lady soberly. " Pray sit 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 161 
 
 down again on your sand sofa. I did not know 
 you had been so ill. Put on your hat, Mr. Bay- 
 ard. Good society does not require ghosts to 
 stand bareheaded at the seacoast in April." 
 
 " I don't move in good society any longer. 1 
 am not expected to know anything about its cus- 
 toms. Sit down beside me, a minute and I 
 will. No stay. Perhaps you will take cold ? 
 I wish I had some wraps. My coat " 
 
 " When / take your coat " began the 
 healthy girl. He had already flung his overcoat 
 upon the dry, warm sand. She gave it back to 
 him. Then she saw the color start into his pale 
 face. 
 
 " Oh, forgive me ! " she said quickly. " I did 
 not mean Mr. Bayard, I never was ill in my 
 life." 
 
 "Nor I, either, before now," pleaded Bayard 
 rather piteously. 
 
 " Who called it the insolence of health ' ? I did 
 not mean to be impertinent, if you will take the 
 trouble to believe me. I fail to grasp the situa- 
 tion, that 's all. I am simply obtuse blunt > 
 blunt as a clam." 
 
 She waved her sun-umbrella dejectedly towards 
 the beach where a solitary clam-digger, a bent, 
 picturesque old man, was seeking his next chow- 
 der. 
 
 " The amount of it is," said Miss Carruth more 
 in her usual manner, " that I was taken a little 
 by surprise. You used to look so different. 
 
162 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 You are greatly changed, Mr. Bayard. Being a 
 heretic does not agree with you." 
 
 " I have had a little touch of something they 
 call pneumonia down here," observed Bayard 
 carelessly. " I 've been out only a few days." 
 
 She made no answer at first ; Bayard was look- 
 ing at the clam-digger, but he felt that she was 
 looking at him. She had seated herself on the 
 sand beside him ; she was now quite her usual 
 self ; her momentary embarrassment had disap- 
 peared like a sail around the Point a graceful, 
 vanishing thing of whose motion one thinks after- 
 wards. He did not suppose that she was there to 
 sympathize with him, but he was vaguely aware 
 of a certain unbridged gap in the subject, when 
 she unexpectedly said, 
 
 " You have not asked me what I came to Wind- 
 over for." 
 
 " Windover does not belong to me, Miss Car- 
 ruth ; nor " a ray of disused mischief sprang to 
 his eyes. Did he start to say, " Nor you " ? He 
 might have been capable of it as far back as Har- 
 vard, or even in junior year at Cesarea, That 
 flash of human nonsense changed his appearance 
 to an almost startling extent. 
 
 " Why now," she laughed, " I think I could 
 recognize you without an introduction." 
 
 " But you have n't told me why you did come 
 to Windover." 
 
 " It does n't signify. You exhibit no interest 
 in the subject, sir." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE, 163 
 
 "You are here," he answered, looking at her, 
 " That fact preoccupied me." 
 
 This reply was without precedent in her experi- 
 ence of him ; and she gave no sign, whether of 
 pleasure or displeasure, of its effect upon her* 
 She looked straight at the clam-digger, who was 
 shouldering his basket laboriously upon his bent 
 back, making a sombre, Millet sketch against the 
 cheerful, afternoon sky. 
 
 " I came down to engage our rooms," she said 
 lightly. " We are coming here, you know, this 
 summer. We board at the Mainsail. I had to 
 have it out with Mrs. Salt about the mosquito bars. 
 Mother would n't come last year because the mos- 
 quito bars had holes, and let in hornets and a 
 mouse. You understand," she added, with some- 
 thing of unnecessary emphasis, " we always come 
 here summers." 
 
 44 1 understand nothing at all ! " said Bayard 
 breathlessly. 44 You were not here last summer, 
 when I was candidating in the First Church." 
 
 44 That, I tell you, was on account of the hornets 
 and the mouse ; the mouse clinched it ; he waked 
 her walking up her sleeve one morning. So we 
 went to Campo Bello the year after. But we 
 always come to Windover." 
 
 44 For instance, how many seasons constitute 
 Always'?" 
 
 44 Three. This will be four. Father likes it 
 above everything. So did mother before the 
 mouse epoch. She got to feeling hornets in her 
 
164 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 shoes whenever she put them on. I wonder father 
 never told you we always come to Windover." 
 
 " The Professor had other things in his mind 
 when he talked to me, second probation, and the 
 dangers of modern German exegesis." 
 
 " Yes, I know. Dear papa ! Windover is n't 
 a doctrine." 
 
 " I wonder you never told me you always came 
 to Windover." 
 
 " Oh, I left that to Father," replied the young 
 lady demurely. " I did come near it, though, once. 
 Do you remember that evening " 
 
 " Yes," he interrupted ; " I remember that even- 
 ing." 
 
 " I mean, when you had taken me up the Sem- 
 inary walk to see the cross. When you said 
 good-by that night, I thought I 'd mention it. 
 But I changed my mind. You see, you had n't 
 had your call, then. I thought I might hurt 
 your feelings. But we always do come to Wind- 
 over We are coming as soon as Anniversary 
 is over. We have the Flying Jib to ourselves 
 that little green cottage, you know, on the rocks. 
 What! Never heard of the Flying Jib? You 
 don't know the summer Windover, do you ? " 
 
 " Only the winter Windover, you see." 
 
 " Nor the summer people, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Only the winter people." 
 
 " Father 's hired that old fish-house for a study," 
 continued Helen with some abruptness. "He 
 says he can't stand the women on the Mainsail 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 165 
 
 piazzas ; you can hear them over at the Flying 
 Jib when the wind sets our way ; they discuss the 
 desserts, and pick each other's characters to pieces^ 
 and compare Kensington stitches, and neuralgia c 
 Father is going to bring down his article on c The 
 State of the Unforgiven after Death ' There ! " 
 she said suddenly, " that Millet sketch is walking 
 into father's study with his basket on his back. 
 The State of the Unforgiven will be a little 
 clammy, don't you think ? " 
 
 Her eyes rippled like the bed of a brown brook 
 in the sun. Bayard laughed. 
 
 " The dear Professor ! " he said. 
 
 " If father were n't such an archangel in private 
 life, it would n't be so funny," observed Helen, jab- 
 bing the point of her purple-and-gold changeable 
 silk sun-umbrella into the sand ; " I can't see what 
 he wants the unconverted to be burned up for. 
 Can you?" 
 
 " The State of the Unforgiven before Death is 
 more than I can manage," replied Bayard, smiling ; 
 " I have my hands full." 
 
 " Do you like it ? " asked Helen, with a pretty* 
 puzzled knot between her smooth brows. 
 
 " Like what ? I like this." 
 
 He looked at her ; as any other man might ~ 
 like those students who used to come so often, and 
 who suddenly called no more. Helen had never 
 seen that expression in his eyes. She dropped her 
 own. She dug little wells in the fine, white sand 
 with her sun-umbrella before she said, 
 
166 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " I have to get the six o'clock train ; you know 
 1 have n't come to stay, yet." 
 
 " But you are coming ! " he exclaimed with irre< 
 pressible joyousness. 
 
 She made no answer, and Bayard's sensitive color 
 changed. 
 
 " Do I like what ? " he repeated in a different 
 tone. 
 
 " Heresy and martyrdom," said Helen serenely. 
 
 " I regret nothing, if that is what you mean ; no 
 matter what it costs ; no matter how it ends no, 
 not for an hour. I told the truth, and I took the 
 consequences ; that is all. How can a man regret 
 standing by his best convictions? " 
 
 "He might regret the convictions," suggested 
 Helen. 
 
 "Might he? Perhaps. Mine are so much 
 stronger than they were when I started in, that 
 they race me and drag me like winged horses in a 
 chariot of fire." 
 
 His eyes took on their dazzling look ; like fine 
 flash-lights they shot forth a brilliance as burning 
 as it was brief ; then their calm and color returned 
 to them. Helen watched the transfiguration touch 
 and pass his face with a sense of something so like 
 reverence that it made her uncomfortable. Like 
 many girls trained as she had been, she had small 
 regard for the priestly office, and none for the 
 priestly assumptions. The recognition of a spirit- 
 ual superiority which she felt to be so far above 
 her that in the nature of things she could not 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 167 
 
 understand it, gave her strong nature a jar : some- 
 thing within her, hitherto fixed and untroubled, 
 shook before it. 
 
 Bayard, without apparent consciousness of the 
 young lady's thoughts, or indeed of her presence 
 for that moment, went on dreamily : 
 
 " I was a theorizer, a dreamer, a theologic ap- 
 prentice, a year ago. I knew no more of real life 
 than that silver sea-gull making for the light- 
 house tower. I took notes about sin in the lecture- 
 room. Now I study misery and shame in Angel 
 Alley. The gap between them is as wide as the 
 stride of that angel in Eevelation do you re- 
 member him? who stood with one foot upon the 
 land and one upon the sea. All I mind is, that I 
 have so much more to learn than I need have had 
 everything, in fact. If I had been taught, if I 
 had been trained if it had not all come with 
 that kind of shock which benumbs a man's brain 
 at first., and uses up his vitality so much faster 
 than he can afford to spare it but I have no 
 convictions that I ought to be talking like this ! " 
 
 " Go on," said Helen softly. 
 
 "Oh, to what end?" asked Bayard wearily,, 
 "That ecclesiastical system which brought me 
 where I am can't be helped by one man's rebel- 
 lion. It 's going to take a generation of us But 
 there is enough that I can help. It is the can-be's, 
 not the can't-be's, that are the business of men 
 like me." 
 
 " I saw you with that drunken man ; he had his 
 
168 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 arms about you," said Helen with charming irrele- 
 vance. Her untroubled brows still held that little 
 knot, half of perplexity, half of annoyance. It be- 
 came her, for she looked the more of a woman for it= 
 
 " Job Slip ? Oh, in Boston that day ; yes. I 
 got him home to his wife all right that night. He 
 was sober after that for for quite a while. I 
 wish you had seen that woman ! " he said earnestly t 
 " Mari is the most miserable and the most grate- 
 ful person that I know. I never knew what a 
 woman could suffer till I got acquainted with that 
 family. They have a dear little boy. His father 
 used to beat him over the head with a shovel. 
 Joey comes over to see me sometimes, and goes to 
 sleep on my lounge. We 're great chums." 
 
 " You do like it," said Helen slowly. She had 
 raised her brown eyes while he was speaking, and 
 watched his face with a veiled look. " Yes; there 's 
 no doubt about it. You do." 
 
 " Would n't you ? " asked Bayard, smiling. 
 
 "No, I should n't." 
 
 She shook her head with that positiveness so 
 charming in an attractive woman, and so. repellent 
 in an ugly one. " When they burn you at the 
 stake you '11 swallow the fire and enjoy it. You '11 
 say, ' Forgive them, for they don't mean it, poor 
 things.' I should say, ' Lord, punish them, for they 
 ought to know better.' That 's just the difference 
 between us. Mother must be right. She always 
 says I am not spiritual." 
 
 "I don't know but I should like to see that 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 169 
 
 little boy, though," added Helen reluctantly; "and 
 Mari if she had on a clean apron." 
 
 " She does n't very often. But it might happen. 
 Why, you might go over there with me some- 
 time this summer, and see them ? " suggested 
 Bayard eagerly. 
 
 " So you lay the first little smoking fagot, do 
 you ? For me, too ? " 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " God forbid ! " said Bayard quickly. Helen's 
 voice had not been as light as her laugh ; and her 
 bright face was grave when he turned and regarded 
 it. She gave back his gaze without evasion, now. 
 She seemed to have grown indefinably older and 
 gentler since she had sat there on the sand beside 
 him. Her eyes, for the first time, now, it seemed, 
 intentionally studied him. She took in the least 
 detail of his changed appearance : the shabby 
 coat, the patch on his boot, his linen worn and 
 darned, the fading color of his hat. She remem- 
 bered him as the best-dressed man in Cesarea 
 Seminary ; nothing but rude, real poverty could 
 have so changed that fashionable and easy student 
 into this country parson, rusting and mended and 
 out-of-the-mode, and conscious of it to the last 
 sense, as only the town-bred man of luxurious 
 antecedents can be of the novel deprivation that 
 might have been another's native air. 
 
 " I don't know that it is necessary to look so 
 pale," was all she said. " I should think you 'd 
 tan here in this glare. I do. See 1 " 
 
170 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 She held out her bare hands, and doubled them 
 up, putting them together to scrutinize the delicate 
 backs of them for the effect of an hour's Windover 
 sun. Her dark purple gloves and the saxifrage lay 
 in her lap. Bayard held the sun-umbrella over 
 her. It gave him a curious sense of event to per= 
 form this little courtesy ; it was so long since he 
 had been among ladies, and lived like other gen- 
 tlemen ; he felt as if he had been upon a journey 
 in strange lands and were coming home again. A 
 blossom of the saxifrage fell to the hem of her dress, 
 and over upon the sand. He delicately touched 
 and took it, saying nothing. 
 
 " Does Mr. Hermon Worcester come and pour 
 pitch and things on the bonfire ? " asked Helen 
 suddenly. 
 
 "I thought you knew," said Bayard, "my 
 uncle has disinherited me. He is not pleased with 
 what I have done." 
 
 "Ah! I did not know. Doesn't he excuse 
 me, Mr. Bayard. It is not.my business." 
 
 " He writes to me," said Bayard. " He sent 
 me things when I was sick. He was very kind 
 then. We have not quarreled at all. But it is 
 some time since I have seen him. I am very fond 
 of my uncle. He is an old man, you know. He 
 was brought up so We mustn't blame him. 
 He thinks I am on the road to perdition. He 
 does n't come to Windover." 
 
 " I see," " said Helen. She leaned her head 
 back against the boulder and looked through half- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 171 
 
 shut lids at the dashing sea. The wind was ris- 
 ing. 
 
 " I must go," she said abruptly. 
 
 "May I take you over to the station?" he 
 asked with boyish anxiety. 
 
 " Mr. Salt is going to harness old Pepper," she 
 answered. Bayard said nothing. He remembered 
 that he could not afford to drive a lady to the sta- 
 tion ; he could not offer to " take " her in the elec- 
 tric conveyance of the great American people. He 
 might have spent at least three quarters of an hour 
 more beside her. It seemed to him that he had 
 not experienced poverty till now. /The exquisite 
 outline of his lip trembled for the instant with that 
 pathos which would have smitten a woman to the 
 heart if she had loved him.) Helen was preoccu- 
 pied with her saxifrage and her purple gloves. 
 She did not, to all appearance, see his face at all, 
 and he was glad of it. 
 
 He arose in silence, and walked beside her to 
 the beach and towards the town. 
 
 "Mr. Bayard," said Helen, with her pleasant 
 unexpectedness, " I owe you something." 
 
 All this while she had not mentioned the wreck 
 or the rescue ; she alone, of all people whom he 
 had seen since he came out of his sick-room, had 
 not inquired, nor exclaimed, nor commended, nor 
 admired. Something in her manner it could 
 hardly be said what reminded him now of this 
 omission ; he had not thought of it before. 
 
 " I owe you a recognition," she said. 
 
172 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " I cancel the debt," he answered, smiling. 
 
 " You cannot. I owe you the recognition of 
 a friend for that brave and noble deed you did. 
 Accept it, sir ! " 
 
 She spread out her hands with a pretty gesture,, 
 as if she gave him something ; she moved her head 
 with a commanding and royal turn, as if her gift 
 had value. He lifted his hat. 
 
 " I could have done no less then ; but I might 
 do more now." 
 
 His worn face had lightened delicately. He 
 looked hopeful and happy. 
 
 " A man does n't put himself where I am, to 
 complain," he added. " But I don't suppose you 
 could even guess how solitary my position is. The 
 right thing said in the right way gives me more 
 courage than people who say it can possibly un- 
 derstand. I have so few friends now. If you 
 allow me to count you among them, you do me a very 
 womanly kindness ; so then I shall owe you " 
 
 " I cancel the debt ! " she interrupted, laughing. 
 44 Did n't Father write to you ? " she hurried on, 
 " when you were so ill ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes. The Professor's note was the first 
 I was allowed to read. He said all sorts of things 
 that I did n't deserve. He said that in spite of 
 the flaws in my theology I had done honor to the 
 old Seminary." 
 
 " Really ? Father will wear a crown and a harp 
 for that concession. Did he give you any message 
 from me, I wonder ? " 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 173 
 
 " He said the ladies sent their regards." 
 
 "Oh! Was that all?" 
 
 "That was all." 
 
 " It was not quite all," said Helen, after a mo- 
 ment's rather grave reflection. " But never mindo 
 Probably Father thought the exegesis incorrect 
 somewhere." 
 
 " Perhaps he objected to the context ? " asked 
 Bayard mischievously. 
 
 " More likely he had a quarrel in the Faculty 
 on his mind and forgot it." 
 
 "If you had written it yourself" suggested 
 Bayard humbly. " But of course you had other 
 things to do." 
 
 Helen gave him an inscrutable look. She made 
 no reply. They passed the fish-house, and the 
 old clam-digger, who was sitting on his overturned 
 basket in the sun, opening clams with a blunt 
 knife, and singing hoarsely : 
 
 " 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. 
 
 " Yon, mate, or me, 
 Which shall it be ? 
 God, He won't tell. 
 Drive on to ! " 
 
 " There is Mr. Salt," said Helen ; for the two 
 had come slowly up in silence to the old gate, 
 
174 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 (fastened with a rope tied in a sailor's knot), that 
 gave the short cut across the meadow to the Main- 
 sail summer hoteL 
 
 " He is watching for me. How sober he looks ! 
 Perhaps something dreadful has happened to Mrs. 
 Salt. Wait a minute. Let me run in ! " 
 
 She tossed her sun-umbrella, gloves, and saxifrage 
 in a heap across Bayard's arm, and ran like a girl 
 or a collie swaying across the meadow in the wind. 
 In a few minutes she walked back, flushed and 
 laughing. 
 
 " Pepper can't go ! " she cried. " He 's got the 
 coliCo He 's swallowed a celluloid collar. Mr. 
 Salt says he thought it was sugar. I must go 
 right along arid catch the car." 
 
 " You have eight minutes yet," said Bayard 
 joyously, " and I can go too ! " 
 
 The car filled up rapidly ; they chatted of little 
 things, or sat in silence. Jane Granite came aboard 
 as they passed her mother's door. Bayard lifted 
 his hat to her cordially; she was at the further 
 end of the car ; she got off at a grocery store, to 
 buy prunes, and did not look back. She had only 
 glanced at Helen Carruth. Bayard did not notice 
 when Jane left. 
 
 The train came in and went out. 'Helen stood 
 on the platform leaning over to take her saxifrage : 
 a royal vision, blurring and melting in purple and 
 gold before his eyes. " 
 
 The train came in' and went out ; her laughing 
 eyes looked back from the frame of the car win- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 175 
 
 dow. The train went out. He turned away and 
 went slowly home. 
 
 Jane had not returned, and Mrs. Granite was 
 away. The house was deserted, and the evening 
 was coming on cold. He climbed the steep stairs 
 wearily to his rooms, and lighted a fire, for he 
 coughed a good deal. He had to go down into 
 the shed and bring up the wood and coal. He 
 was so tired when this was done that he flung him- 
 self upon the old lounge. He looked slowly about 
 his dismal rooms : at the top curl of the iron angel 
 on the ugly stove ; at the empty, wooden rocking- 
 chair with the bones ; at the paper screen, where 
 the Cupid on the basket of grapes sat forever tast- 
 ing and never eating impossible fruit ; at the study- 
 table, where the subscription list for his quarter's 
 salary lay across the manuscript notes of his last 
 night's sermon. The great Saint Michael on 
 the wall eyed him with that absence of curiosity 
 which belongs to remote superiority. Bayard did 
 not return the gaze of the picture. /He took some- 
 thing from his vest-pocket and looked at it gently, 
 twisting it about in his thin hands. It was a sprig 
 of saxifrage, whose white blossom was hanging its 
 head over upon the dry, succulent stem. Bayard 
 got up suddenly, and put the flower in a book upon 
 his study-table. | 
 
 As he did so, a short, soft, broken sound pat- 
 tered up the stairs. The door opened without the 
 preliminary of a knock, and little Joey Slip walked 
 ^eriously in. He said he had come to see the min- 
 
176 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 ister. He sat down sedately and ceremoniously 
 upon the carpet-lounge. He said Marm said to 
 say Father 's home from Georges' drunk as a fish t 
 | He put out his little fingers and patted Bayard on 
 the cheek, as if the minister had been the child, 
 and Joey the old, old man. J 
 
xn. 
 
 IT was night, and it was Angel Alley. One of 
 the caprices of New England spring had taken the 
 weather, and it had suddenly turned cold. The 
 wind blew straight from the sea. It was going to 
 rain. The inner harbor was full ; in the dark, 
 thick air bowsprits nodded and swung sleepily, 
 black outlines against little glimmering swathes of 
 grayish-yellow cut by the head-lights of anchored 
 vessels. Dories put out now and then from the 
 schooners, and rowed lustily to the docks ; these 
 were packed with sailors or fishermen who leaped 
 up the sides of the wharves like cats, tied the 
 painter to invisible rings in black, slimy places, and 
 scrambled off, leaving the dory to bob and hit the 
 piers ; or they cast the painter to the solitary oars- 
 man, who rowed back silently to the vessel, while 
 his gayer shipmates reeled, singing, over the 
 wharves and disappeared in the direction of the 
 town. 
 
 The sky was heavily clouded, and fog was steal- 
 ing stealthily off the Point. 
 
 Angel Alley was full, that night. Half a dozen 
 large fishermen were just in from Georges' ; these 
 had made their trip to Boston to sell their cargoes 
 of halibut, haddock, or cod, and had run home 
 
178 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 quickly on a stiff sou'easter, or were unloading 
 direct at their native wharves. The town over- 
 flowed with men of unmistakably nautical callings, 
 red of face, strong of hand, unsteady of step ; men 
 with the homeless eye and the roving heart of the 
 sea : Americans, Scotch, Swedes, Portuguese, Ital- 
 ians, Irish, and Finns swung up together from the 
 wharves and swarmed over the alley, ready for 
 a song, a laugh or a blow, as the case might be ; 
 equally prepared to smoke, to love, to quarrel, or 
 to drink, liable to drift into a prayer-room or a 
 bar-room, just as it happened, and there was small 
 space to doubt which would happen ; men whose 
 highest aspiration was to find the barber and the 
 boot-black ; men who steered steadily home, think- 
 ing of their baby's laugh, and the wife's kiss ; and 
 men who turned neither to the right nor to the left, 
 who lingered for neither men nor gods nor v r o- 
 men, but pushed, with head thrust out like a dog's 
 on the scent, straight on to the first saloon that 
 gaped at them. 
 
 Open and secret, lawful and unlawful, these 
 were of an incredible number, if one should esti- 
 mate the size of the short street. Angel Alley 
 overflowed with abomination, as the tides, befouled 
 by the town, overflowed the reeking piers of the 
 docks. In sailors' boarding-houses, in open bars, 
 in hidden cellars, in billiard-rooms, in shooting-gal= 
 leries, in dance-halls, and in worse, whiskey ran in 
 rivers. At the banks of those black streams men 
 and some women crawled and drank, flaunting or 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 179 
 
 hiding their fiery thirst as the mood took them, 
 and preying upon one another, each according to 
 his power or his choice, as the chance of an. evil 
 hour decreed. 
 
 Girls with hard eyes and coarse mouths strutted 
 up and down the alley in piteous numbers. Sights 
 whose description cannot blot this page might have 
 been detected in the shadows of the wharves and of 
 the winding street. Men went into open doors with 
 their full trips' earnings in their pockets, and 
 staggered out without a penny to their shameful 
 names. Fifty, seventy, a hundred dollars, vanished 
 in the carouse of a single hour. One man, a for- 
 eigner, of some nationality unknown, ran up and 
 down, wildly calling for the police. He had been 
 robbed of two hundred dollars in a drunken bout, 
 last night ; he had but just come to such senses as 
 nature may have given him, and to the discovery 
 of his loss. His wife, he said, lived over in West 
 Windover ; she warn't well when he shipped ; there 
 was another baby, seven young ones already, 
 and she could n't get trust at the stores, the bills 
 had run up so long. 
 
 " Lord ! " he said stupidly ; " s'pose I find 'em 
 lay in' round starved ? " 
 
 He stoutly refused to go home. He swore he 'd 
 rather go to jail than face her. He sat down on 
 the steps of old Trawl's, sobbing openly, like a 
 child. A little crowd gathered, one or two voices 
 jeered at him, and some one scolded him smartly, 
 for no one moralizes more glibly than the sot in his 
 intervals of sobriety. 
 
180 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Oh, shut up there ! " cried the girl Lena. 
 "Ain't he miser'ble enough already? Ain't all 
 of us that much? Go home, Jean!" she urged 
 kindly; "go home to Marie. She won't cuss 
 you." 
 
 " She never cussed me yet" answered Jean 
 doubtfully. 
 
 He got up and reeled away, wringing his stubbed 
 hands. Lena walked up the alley, alone ; her eyes 
 were on the ground ; she did not answer when one 
 of the girls called her ; she strolled on aimlessly, 
 and one might almost say, thoughtfully. 
 
 " Better come in, Lena," said a voice above her. 
 She looked up. The beautiful new transparency, 
 which was still the wonder and admiration of the 
 fishermen coming home from Georges' or the 
 Banks, flashed out in strong white and scarlet 
 lights the strange words, now grown familiar to 
 Angel Alley : 
 
 "THE CHURCH OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST." 
 
 Beneath, in the broken, moving color stood the 
 minister ; his foot was on the topmost step of the 
 long flight ; he looked pale and tired. 
 
 " Is n't it better for you in here, than out there ? " 
 he asked gently. Lena gave one glance at his 
 pitying eyes ; then she followed that brilliance like 
 a moth. 
 
 He stepped back and allowed her to precede 
 him, as if she had been any other woman, the 
 only difference being one which the girl was not 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 181 
 
 likely to notice : the minister did not lift his hat 
 to Lena. She hung her head and went in. 
 
 " They are singing to-night practicing for 
 their concert," he said. " Perhaps they might like 
 the help of your voice." 
 
 She made no answer, and the preacher and the 
 street girl entered the bright hall together. 
 
 It was well filled with well-behaved and decently 
 dressed groups of men and women ; these were in- 
 formally scattered about the main room and the 
 ante-rooms, for no service was in progress ; the 
 whole bore the appearance of a people's club, or 
 social entertainment, whose members read or chat- 
 ted, played games, or sang, as the mood took them. 
 
 these last were often quite full and busy with fish- 
 ermen and sailors ; but that night the most of the 
 people were listening to the singing. Music, Bay- 
 ard had already learned, would lead them any- 
 where. At the first sound of the poor and pa- 
 thetic melodepn, they had begun to collect around 
 the net of harmony like mackerel round a weir. 
 When Lena came into the room, the little choir 
 were singing the old - fashioned, beautiful Ave 
 Sanctissima which even Angel Alley knew. Lena 
 dropped into an obscure seat, and remained silent 
 for a time. Suddenly her fine contralto rang in, 
 
 " 'T is midnight on the sea. 
 
 Ora pro nobis, 
 We lift our souls to thee." 
 
 The minister, distant and pale T blurred before 
 
182 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 her eyes while she sang. /He looked like a figure 
 resting on a cloud in a sacred picture. > He 
 moved about among his people, tall, smiling, and 
 shining. They looked at him with wistful, won- 
 dering tenderness. He passed in and out of the 
 halls on errands whose nature no one asked. Oc- 
 casionally he returned, bringing some huddling 
 figure with him from the street ; a homesick boy. 
 a homeless man, a half-sodden fellow found hesi- 
 tating outside of Trawl's den, midway between 
 madness and sanity, ready for hell or heaven, and 
 following Bayard like a cur. 
 
 Down the dark throat of Angel Alley a man, 
 that night, was doing a singular thing. He was a 
 fisherman, plainly one of the recent arrivals of the 
 anchored fleet ; he was a sturdily built fellow with 
 a well-shaped head ; he had the naturally opon 
 face and attractive bearing often to be found 
 among drinking men ; at his best he must have 
 been a handsome, graceful fellow, lovable perhaps, 
 and loving. At his worst, he was a cringing sot. 
 He wore, over his faded dark-red flannel shirt, the 
 gingham jumper favored by his class ; and it 
 seemed he had lost his hat. This man was mo- 
 notonously moving to and fro, covering a given 
 portion of Angel Alley over and again, retracing 
 his unsteady footsteps from point to point, and 
 repeating his course with mysterious regularity. 
 His beat covered the space between the saloon 
 of old Trawl (which stood about midway of the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 183 
 
 alley) and the scarlet and white transparency, 
 whose strange and sacred heraldry blazed, held 
 straight out, an arm of fire, across the mouth of 
 the street. Angel Alley, as we have explained, had, 
 at the first, inclined to call the mission Christ's 
 Rest, for reasons of its own ; but even that half- 
 godless reminder of a history better forgotten 
 was growing out of date. The people's name for 
 Emanuel Bayard's house of worship and of wel- 
 come was fast settling into one beautiful word 
 Christlove. 
 
 / The fisherman in the jumper wavered to and 
 fro between Christlove and the ancient grog-shop. 
 In the dark weather the figure of the man seemed 
 to swing from this to that like a pendulum ; at 
 moments he seemed to have no more sense or senti- 
 ence. He was hurled as if he were forced by in- 
 visible l machinery ; he recoiled as if wound by un- 
 seen springs ; now his steps quickened into a run, 
 as he wrenched himself away from the saloon, and 
 faced the prayer-room ; then they lagged, and he 
 crawled like a crab to the rum-shop door. His 
 hands were clenched together. Long before it 
 began to rain his hatless forehead was wet. 
 
 His eyes stared straight before him. He 
 seemed to see nothing but the two open doors 
 between which he was vibrating. No one had 
 happened to notice him, or, if so, his movements 
 were taken for the vagaries of intoxication. A 
 nerve of God knows what, in his diseased will 
 began to throb, and he made a leap away from 
 
184 A SINGULAR LIFE^, 
 
 the saloon, and ran heavily towards the white and 
 scarlet lights of the transparency ; at the steps, he 
 fell, and lay groveling ; he could hear the singing 
 overhead : 
 
 " Ora pro nobis, 
 We lift our souls to thee." 
 
 He tried to climb up ; but something call it 
 his muscle, call it his will, call it his soul ; it 
 does not signify something refused him, and he 
 did not get beyond the second stair. Slowly, TtP 1 
 luctantly, mysteriously, his feet seemed to be 
 dragged back. He put out his hands, as if to 
 push at an invisible foe ; he leaned over back- 
 wards, planting his great oiled boots firmly in the 
 ground, as if resisting unseen force; but slowly, 
 reluctantly, mysteriously, he was pulled back. 
 At the steps of the saloon, in a blot of darkness, 
 on the shadowed side, hesankjj he got to his 
 hands and knees like an animal, and there he 
 crawled. (j[f any one had been listening, the man 
 might have been heard to sob, 
 
 " It 's me and the rum God and the devil 
 Now we '11 see ! " 
 
 ~~ He rose more feebly this time, and struggled 
 over toward the prayer-room ; he wavered, and 
 turned before he had got there, and made weakly 
 back. Panting heavily, he crawled up the steps 
 of the saloon, and then lurched over, and fell down 
 into the blot whence he had come. There he lay, 
 crying, with the arm of his brown gingham jumper 
 before his eyes. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 185 
 
 f " Look up, Job ! " said a low voice in the 
 
 / shadow at his side. Job Slip lifted his sodden 
 face, swollen, red, and stained with tears. In- 
 
 / stinctively he stretched up his hands. 
 
 V^____." Oh, sir ! " was all he said. 
 
 Bayard stood towering above him ; he had his 
 grand Saint Michael look, half of scorn and half 
 of pity. 
 
 Job had not seen his face before since the 
 night when it suddenly rose on a great wave, 
 like that of another drowning man, making to- 
 wards him in the undertow off Ragged Rock. 
 Job put up his hands, now, before his own face. 
 He told Mari, long afterwards, that the minister 
 blinded him. I J 
 
 / " Get up ! 'J said Bayardynnuch in the tone in 
 which he had said it the day he knocked Job 
 down. 
 
 Job crawled up. 
 
 /> " Come here ! " said the preacher sternly. He ; 
 held out his white hand ; Job put his wet and 
 fishy palm into it ; Bayard drew that through his 
 own arm, and led him away without another 
 word. Old Trawl came muttering to the door, , 
 and stood with his hand over his eyes, shutting 
 out the glare of the bar-room within, to watch ' J 
 them. Ben looked over his shoulder, scowling. 
 Father and son muttered unpleasantly together, as 
 the minister and the drunkard moved off, and 
 melted into the fine, dark rain. 
 
 Bayard led his man down towards the wharves. 
 
186 A SINGULAR ILIFE. 
 
 It was dark, there, and still I there was a secluded 
 spot, which he knew of, under a salt-house at the 
 head of a long pier but seldom used at night. The 
 fine rain was uncertain, and took moods. As the 
 two came down the larynx of the Alley, the drizzle 
 had dripped off into a soft mist. Bayard heard 
 Captain Hap across the street giving utterance to 
 his favorite phrase : 
 
 " It 's comiii' on thick ; so thick it has stems to 
 it." 
 
 The captain looked after the minister and the 
 drunkard with disapproval in his keen, dark eyes. 
 
 "Better look out, Mr. Bayard! " he called, with 
 the freedom of a nurse too recently dismissed not 
 to feel responsible for his patient. "It ain't no 
 night for you to be settin' round on the docks. 
 You cough, sir ! Him you 've got in tow ain't 
 worth it no, nor twenty like him ! " 
 
 " That 's a fact," said Job humbly, stopping 
 short. 
 f "Come on, Job," Bayard answered decidedly. 
 
 So they came under the salt-house, and sat down. 
 Both were silent at first. j( Job wiped off . an old 
 fish-keg with the sleeve of his jumper, and offered 
 this piece of furniture to the minister ; the fisher- 
 man perched himself on the edge of a big broken 
 pile which reared its gray head above the wharf ; 
 the rising tide flapped with a sinister sound under 
 his feet which hung over, recklessly swinging. Job 
 looked down into the black water. He was man 
 enough still to estimate what he had done, and 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 187 
 
 miserable enough to quench the shame and fire in 
 him together by a leap. Men do such things, in 
 crises such as Job had reached, far oftener than we 
 may suppose. Job said nothing. Bayard watched 
 him closely. 
 
 " Well, Job ? " he said at last ; not sternly, as 
 he had spoken at Trawl's door. . 
 
 " I have n't touched it before, sir, not a drop 
 till last night," said Job with sullen dreariness. 
 " I was countin' on it how I should see you the 
 fust time since I thought of it all the way home 
 from Georges'. I was so set to see you I could n't 
 wait to get ashore to see you. I took a clean 
 jump from the dory to the landin'. I upsot the 
 dory and two men, . . . Mr. Bayard, sir, the 
 cap'n 's right. L ain't wuth it. You'd better let 
 me drownded off the Clara Em." 
 
 " Tell me how it happened," said Bayard gently. 
 Job shook his head. 
 
 " You know 's well 's I, sir. We come ashore, 
 
 and Trawl, he had one of his runners to the 
 
 wharf. Ben was there, bossin' the job." /^ 
 
 The minister listened to this profanity without 
 proffering a rebuke. His teeth were set; he 
 looked as if he would have liked to say as much, 
 himself. 
 
 /jC There was a fellar there had made two hun- 
 dred dollars to his trip. He treated. So I 
 said I did n't want any. But I hankered for it 
 till it seemed I 'd die there on the spot before 'em. 
 Ben, he sent a bar-boy after me come to say I 
 
188 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 need n't drink unless I pleased, but not to be on- 
 social, and to come along with the crowd. So I 
 said, No, I was a goin' home to my wife and kid. 
 When the fellar was gone, I see he 'd slipped a 
 bottle into my coat pocket. It was a pint bottle 
 XXX. The cork was loose and it leaked. So I 
 put it back, for I swore I wouldn't touch it, and I 
 got a little on my fingers. I put 'em in my mouth 
 to lick 'em off and, sir, before God, that 's all 
 I know till I come to, to-day. The hanker 
 got me, and that 's all I know. I must ha' ben 
 at it all night. Seems to me I went home an' 
 licked my wife and come away ag'in, but I ain't 
 sure. I must ha' ben on a reg'lar toot. I 'm 
 
 a drunken fool, and the quicker you let me 
 
 go to the better." 
 
 Job leaned over and gazed at the water quietly. 
 There was a look about his jaw which Bayml 
 did not like. He came out from under the salt- 
 house and moved the keg close beside the broken 
 pile. 
 
 " What were you doing when I found you ? I 've 
 been looking for you everywhere last night, and 
 all day." 
 
 " I was havin' it out," said Job doggedly. 
 
 " Having ? " 
 
 "It lays between me and the rum, God and the 
 devil. I was set to see which would beat." 
 
 " Why did n't you come straight over to see 
 me?" 
 
 "I could n't." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. . 189 
 
 " Could lib t put your feet up those steps and 
 walk in ? " 
 
 " No, sir. I could n't do it. I come over 
 twenty times. I could n't get no further. I had 
 to come back to Trawl's. I HAD TO DO IT ! " 
 
 Job brought his clenched hand down heavily on 
 his knee. 
 
 " You can't onderstand, sir," he said drearily. 
 " You ain't a drinkin' man." 
 
 " I sometimes wish I had been," said the minis- 
 ter unexpectedly. " I must understand these 
 things." 
 
 " God forbid ! " said Job solemnly. He 
 stretched his shaking arm out with a beautiful 
 gesture, and put it around Bayard, as* if he were 
 shielding from taint a woman or some pure being 
 from an unknown world. 
 
 Tears sprang to the minister's eyes. He took 
 the drunkard's dirty hand, and clasped it warmly. 
 The two men sat in silence. Job looked at the 
 water. Bayard looked steadily at Job. 
 
 " Come," he said at length, in his usual tone. 
 " It is beginning to rain, in earnest. I *m not quite 
 strong yet. I suppose I must not sit here. Take 
 my arm, and come home to Mari and Joey." 
 
 Job acquiesced hopelessly. He knew that it 
 would happen all over again. They walked on 
 mutely ; their steps fell with a hollow sound upon 
 the deserted pier ; the water sighed as they passed, 
 like the involuntary witness of irreclaimable 
 tragedy. 
 
190 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Suddenly, Bayard dropped Job's hand, and 
 spoke in a ringing voice : 
 
 " Job Slip, get down upon your knees just 
 where you stand ! " 
 
 Job hesitated. 
 
 " Down ! " cried Bayard. 
 
 Job obeyed, as if he had been a dog. 
 
 4fe Now, lift up your hands so to the sky." 
 
 As if the minister had been a cut-throat, Job 
 obeyed again. 
 
 " Now pray, 1 ' commanded Bayard. 
 
 " I don't know how to," stammered Job. 
 
 " Pray ! Pray ! " repeated Bayard. 
 
 " I 've forgot the way you do it, sir ! " 
 
 " No matter how other people do it ! This is 
 your affair. Pray your own way. Pray anyhow. 
 But pray ! " 
 
 " I have n't done such a thing since I was 
 since I used to say : ' Eenty Deenty Donty,' no, 
 that ain't it, neither. ' Now I lay me ? ' That 's 
 more like it. But that don't seem appropriate to 
 the circumstances, sir." 
 
 " Try again, Job." 
 
 " 'T ain't no use, Mr. Bayard. I 'm a goner. If 
 I could n't keep sober for you, I ain*t ergointer for 
 no Creetur I never see nor spoke to, nor no man 
 ever see nor spoke to, a thousand fathoms up 
 overhead." 
 
 Job lifted his trembling arms high and higher 
 towards the dark sky. 
 
 " Pray ! " reiterated Bayard. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 191 
 
 " I can't do it, sir ! " 
 
 " Pray ! " commanded Bayard. 
 
 " Oh, God ! " gasped Job. 
 
 Bayard took off his hat. Job's arms fell^ 
 his face dropped into them ; he shook from head 
 to foot. 
 
 " There ! " he cried, " I done it. ... I '11 do it 
 again. God! God! God!" 
 
 Bayard bowed his Lead. Moments passed before 
 he said, solemnly, 
 
 " Job Slip, I saved your life, did n't I ? " 
 
 " You committed that mistake, sir." 
 
 " It belongs to me, then. You belong to me. I 
 take you. I give you to God." 
 
 He dropped upon his knees beside the drunkard 
 in the rain. 
 
 " Lord," he said, in a tone of infinite sweetness, 
 " here is a poor perishing man. Save him ! He 
 has given himself to Thee." 
 
 "The parson did that, Lord," sobbed Job. 
 " Don't give me no credit for it ! " 
 
 " Save him ! " continued Bayard, who seemed 
 hardly to have heard the drunkard's interruption. 
 " Save me this one man ! I have tried, and failed, 
 and I am discouraged to the bottom of my heartc 
 But I cannot give him up. I will never give him 
 up till he is dead, or I am. If I cannot do any 
 other thing in Winclover, for Christ's sake, save 
 me this one drunken man ! " 
 
 Bayard lifted his face in a noble agony. Job 
 hid his own before that Gethsemane. 
 
192 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 "Does the parson care so much as that? 1 ' 
 thought the fisherman. 
 
 The rain dashed on Bayard's white face. He 
 rose from his knees. 
 
 " Job Slip," he said, " you have signed a con- 
 tract which you can never break. Your vow lies 
 between God and you. I am the witness. I have 
 bound you over to a clean life. Go and sin no 
 more. I '11 risk you now," added Bayard, quietly. 
 " I shall not even walk home with you. You have 
 fifteen rum-shops to meet before you get back 
 to your wife and child. Pass them ! They all 
 stand with open doors, and the men you know are 
 around these doors. You will not enter one of 
 them. You will go straight home ; and to-morrow 
 you will send me written testimony from Mari, 
 your wife, I want her to write it, Job> that 
 you did as I bade you, and came home sober. 
 Now go, and God go with you." 
 
 As Bayard turned to give the drunkard his hand, 
 he stumbled a little over something on the dark 
 pier. Job had not risen from his knees, but 
 stooped, and put his lips to the minister's patched 
 shoe. 
 
 "This is to sertify that my Husband come 
 Jhome last nite sober and haint ben on a Bat seiice, 
 god bless you enriyhow. MARIA SLIP." 
 
 This legend, written in a laborious chirography 
 on a leaf torn from a grocer's pass-book, was put 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 193 
 
 into Bayard's hand at noon of the next day. Joey 
 brought it ; he had counted upon a nap on the 
 study lounge, and was rather disappointed to find 
 it occupied. Mrs. Granite said she had sent for 
 Cap'n Hap; she said the minister's temperature 
 had gone up to a hundred and twenty, and she 
 should think it would. 
 
xm. 
 
 JANE GRANITE came out of the kitchen door v 
 and sat down in the back yard underneath the 
 clothes-lines. She sat on the overturned salt-fish 
 box that she kept to stand on and reach the 
 clothes-pins, Jane was such a little body. She 
 looked smaller than usual that Monday afternoon, 
 and shrunken, somehow ; her eyes were red, as if 
 she had been crying. She cried a good deal on 
 Mondays, after Ben Trawl had come and gone on 
 Sunday evenings. 
 
 The minister was quite himself again, and about 
 his business. This fact should have given Jane 
 the keenest gratification ; whereas, in proportion as 
 their lodger had grown well and cheerful, Jane had 
 turned pale and sober. When he was really ill, 
 her plain face wore a rapt look. For Captain Hap 
 had remained on duty only a day or two ; Mr. Bay- 
 ard had not been sick enough to need professional 
 nursing, this^ time, and it had since devolved wholly 
 upon the women of the household to minister to his 
 convalescent needs. 
 
 Happy Jane ! She ran up and down, she flitted 
 to and fro, she cooked, she ironed, she mended, she 
 sewed, she read aloud, she ran errands, she 
 watched for the faintest flicker in the changes of 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 195 
 
 expression on his face : its dignity, its beauty, and 
 its dearness for that one precious page out of her 
 poor story were hers. All the rest of her life he 
 belonged to other people and to other things : to 
 the drunkards and the fishermen and the services j 
 to his books and his lonely walks and his unap* 
 proachable thoughts ; to his dreams of the future 
 in which Jane had no more part than the paper 
 Cupid on the screen, forever tasting and never eat- 
 ing impossible fruit } to his memories of a past of 
 which Jane knew that she knew no more than she 
 did of the etiquette at the palace of Kubla Khan in 
 Xanadu. 
 
 Jane understood about Kubla Khan (or she 
 thought she did, which answers the same purpose), 
 for she had read the poem aloud to him one day 
 while her mother sat sewing in the wooden rock- 
 ing-chair. Jane was " educated," like most re- 
 spectable Windover girls ; she had been through 
 the high school of her native town ; she read not 
 at all badly ; Mr. Bayard had told her something 
 to this effect, and Jane sang about the house all 
 the rest of the day. Yes ; Jane understood Kubla 
 Khan. 
 
 Jane watched the luminous patience in the sick 
 man's eyes, 
 
 " Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man." 
 
 She repeated the lines mechanically, with the bitten 
 consciousness of the half-educated of being moved 
 by something which it was beyond her power and 
 
196 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 her province to reconcile with the facts of her life. 
 She sighed when the brilliant eagerness and rest- 
 lessness of returning health replaced that large and 
 gentle light. Bayard had asked her mother to let 
 Jane keep his copy of that volume ; he said he 
 had two sets of Coleridge. He had written her 
 name in it ; how could he guess that Jane would 
 lock the book away in her bureau drawer by day, 
 and sleep with it under her pillow at night ? He 
 tossed her a rose of common human gratitude ; it 
 fell into a girl's heart, a burning coal of raven- 
 ous longing, and ate its way. 
 
 It was summer in Windover ; and Jane's one 
 beautiful leaf of life had turned. Mr. Bayard had 
 long since been able to take care of himself; 
 coughing still, and delicate enough, but throwing 
 off impatiently, as the gentlest man does, in health, 
 the little feminine restraints and devotions which 
 he found necessary and even agreeable in illness. 
 It would not be too much to say that Jane loved 
 him as unselfishly as any woman ever had, or ever 
 would ; but in proportion as his spirits rose, hers 
 sank. She reproached herself, poor child, that it 
 did not make her perfectly happy to have the min- 
 ister get well. Suffering and helpless, he had 
 needed her. Busy and well, he thought of her no 
 more. For that one time, that cruelly little time, 
 she, Jane Granite, of all the women in the world, 
 had known that precious right. To her, only to 
 her, it had been given to serve his daily, common 
 Wants ; she had carried up his tray, she had read 02 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 197 
 
 written tireless hours as his mood decreed, or she 
 had sat in silent study of his musing face, not one 
 lineament of which did muse of her. 
 
 But it was summer in Windover, and the minis 
 ter was Jane's no more. 
 
 It was one of the last of the days of a celestial 
 June. Bayard had lived the month of blossoms 
 out eagerly and restlessly. His work had grown 
 enormously upon his hands, and required an atten- 
 tion which told on every nerve. He had gone 
 headlong into the depths of one of those dedications 
 which do not give a man time to come up for air. 
 /His eye wore an elate, rapt look. His cheeks 
 burned with a fine fever. His personal beauty 
 that summer was something at which the very 
 " dock-rats " on the wharves turned back to look. 
 No woman easily forgot it, and how many secretly 
 dreamed of it, fortunately the young man never 
 knew. The best of men may work his share of 
 heart-break, and the better he is the less he will 
 suspect it.) 
 
 Bayard was far too busy to think of women. 
 For he did not exactly think of Helen Carruth; 
 he felt her. She did not occupy his mind so far 
 that he experienced the need of communication 
 with her ; he had never written her so much as a 
 note of ceremony. After her brief scintillation be- 
 fore him on Windover Point that April afternoon, 
 she had melted from his horizon. Nevertheless, 
 she had changed the tint of it. Now and then in 
 the stress of his prosaic, thankless, yet singularly 
 
198 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 enthusiastic work, there came to the young preacher 
 that sense of something agreeable about to happen, 
 which makes one wake up singing in the morn- 
 nig of one's hardest day's labor, or sends one to 
 rest dreaming quietly in the face of the cruelest 
 anxiety. The devotee, in the midst of his orisons, 
 was aware of the footstep of possible pleasure fall- 
 ing lightly, distant, doubtful, towards his celL 
 Some good men pray the louder for this sweet and 
 perilous prescience. Bayard worked the harder. 
 
 And it was summer in Windover. The scanty 
 green carpet of the downs had unrolled to its full, 
 making as much as possible of its meagre propor- 
 tions, atoning in depth of color for what it lacked 
 in breadth and length : if the cliffs and boulders 
 were grayer for the green, the grass looked greener 
 for the gray. The saxifrage had faded, but among 
 the red-cupped moss the checkerberry shot np 
 tender, reddish leaves, the white violets scented 
 the swamps, and the famous wild roses of the 
 Cape dashed the bayberry thickets with pink. The 
 late apple blossoms had blushed and gone, but 
 the leaf and the hidden fruit responded to the 
 anxious attention of the unenthusiastic farmer who 
 wrenched his living out of the reluctant granite 
 soil. In front of the hotels the inevitable gerani- 
 ums blazed scarlet in mathematical flower-beds; 
 and the boarding-houses convalesced from house- 
 cleaning in striped white scrim curtains and 
 freshly painted blue wooden pumps. The lemon- 
 ade and candy stores of " the season " sprouted 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 199 
 
 with the white clovers by the wayside ; and the 
 express cart of the summer boarder's luggage 
 blossomed with the lonely and uncomfortable hy- 
 drangea, bearing its lot in yellow jars on piazza 
 steps. Windover Point wore a coquettish air of 
 expectation, like a girl in her best dress who waits 
 in a lane for an invisible admirer. 
 
 Windover Harbor was alive and alert. The 
 summer fleets were out ; the spring fleets were in. 
 Bayard could hear the drop of anchors now, in the 
 night, through his open windows ; and the soft, 
 pleasant splash, the home-coming and home-yearn- 
 ing sound which wakened the summer people, only 
 to lull them to sleep again with a sense of poetic 
 pleasure in a picturesque and alien life, gave to 
 the lonely preacher of the winter Windover the 
 little start of anxiety and responsibility which 
 assassinates rest. He thought : 
 
 " Another crew in ! Is it Job ? Or Bob ? Or 
 Jean? Will they go to Trawl's, or get home 
 straight ? I must be off at dawn to see to this." 
 
 On the little beach opposite Mrs. Granite's cot- 
 tage the sea sighed in the night to answer him ; 
 ebbing, it lapped the pebbles gently, as if it felt 
 sorry for the preacher, who had not known Wind- 
 over as long as it had ; it inhaled and exhaled 
 long, soft breaths, in rhythm with which his own 
 began to grow deep and quiet ; and the start from 
 a dream of drowning in the undertow off Ragged 
 Rock would tell him that he had slept. More 
 often, of late, the rising tide had replied ner- 
 
200 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 vously ; it was fitful and noisy ; it panted and 
 seemed to struggle for articulation : for the June 
 sea was restless, and the spring gales had died 
 hard. The tints of the harbor were still a little 
 cool, but the woodland on the opposite shore held 
 out an arm of rich, ripe leaf ; and the careening 
 sails warmed to the sunrise and the sunset in rose 
 and ochre, violet and pearl, opening buds of the 
 blossom of midsummer color that was close at 
 hand. 
 
 Bayard was in his rooms, resting after one of 
 these unresting nights. He had set forth at day- 
 break to meet an incoming schooner at the docks. 
 It had become his habit, whenever he could, to see 
 that the fishermen were personally conducted past 
 the dens of Angel Alley, and taken home sober to 
 waking wife and sleeping child. In this laborious 
 task Job Slip's help had been of incredible value. 
 Job was quite sober now ; and in the intervals be- 
 tween trips this converted Saul delighted to play 
 the Paul to Bayard's little group of apostles. Yet 
 Job did not pose. He was more sincere than most 
 better men. He took to decency as if it had been 
 a new trade ; and the novel dignity of missionary 
 zeal sat upon him like a liberal education. The 
 Windover word for what had happened to Job was 
 "re-formation." Job Slip, one says, is a reformed 
 man. The best way to save a .rascal is to give him 
 another one to save ; ; and Job, who was no rascal, 
 but the ruin of a very good fellow, brilliantly 
 illustrated this eternal law. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 201 
 
 Bayard had come back, unusually tired, about 
 noon, and had not left the house since his return. 
 He was reading, with his back to the light, and 
 the sea in his ears. The portiere of mosquito 
 netting, which hung now at the door between his 
 two rooms, was pushed aside that he might see the 
 photographed Leonardo as he liked to do. The 
 scanty furniture of his sleeping-room had been 
 moved about during his recent illness, so that now 
 the picture was the only object visible from the 
 study where he sat. The mosquito portiere was 
 white. Mrs. Granite having ineffectually urged a 
 solferino pink, Bayard regarded this portiere with 
 the disproportionate gratitude of escape from evil. 
 
 A knock had struck the cottage door, and Jane 
 Granite had run to answer it. She was in her 
 tidy, blue gingham dress, but a little wet and 
 crumply, as was to be expected on a Monday. 
 She had snatched up a white apron, and looked 
 like an excellent parlor-maid. For such, perhaps, 
 the caller took her, for practical tact was not his 
 most obtrusive quality. He was an elderly man, a 
 gentleman ; his mouth was x stern, and his eyes were 
 kind. He carried a valuable cane, and spoke with 
 a certain air of authority, as of a man well ac- 
 quainted with this world and the other too. He 
 asked for Mr. Bayard, and would send up his card 
 before intruding upon him ; a ceremony which 
 quite upset little Jane, and she stood crimson with 
 embarrassment. Her discomfort was not decreased 
 by the bewildering presence of a carriage at the 
 
202 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 gate of her mother's 'garden. Beyond the rows 
 of larkspur and feverfew, planted for the vase on 
 Mr. Bayard's study-table, Mr. Salt's best carryall, 
 splendid in spring varnish, loomed importantly. 
 Pepper, with the misanthropy of a confirmed dys* 
 peptic, drew the carryall, and ladies sat within it. 
 There were two. They were covered by certain 
 strange, rich carriage robes undreamed of by Mr. 
 Salt ; dull, silk blankets, not of Windover designs. 
 The ladies were both handsomely dressed. One 
 was old ; but one ah ! one was young. 
 
 " Mr. Bayard is in, my dear." The voice of the 
 caller rose over the larkspur to the carryall. 
 " Will you wait, or drive on ? " 
 
 " We '11 drive on," replied the younger lady 
 rather hurriedly. 
 
 " Helen, Helen ! " complained the elder. " Don't 
 you know that Pepper is afraid of the electric 
 cars ? I 've noticed horses are that live in the 
 same town with them." 
 
 Helen did not laugh at this, but her eyes 
 twinkled irreverently. She wrapped herself in 
 her old-gold silk blanket, and turned to watch 
 the sea. She did not look at Mrs. Granite's 
 cottage. 
 
 The dignified accents of the Professor's voice 
 were now wafted over the larkspur bed again. 
 
 " Mr. Bayard asks if the ladies will not come up 
 to his study, Statira ? It is only one short flight. 
 Will you do so ? " 
 
 Simultaneously Bayard's eager face flashed out 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 203 
 
 of the doorway ; and before Helen could assent or 
 dissent, her mother, on the young man's arm, was 
 panting up between the feverfew and into the cot- 
 tage. Helen followed in meek amusement. 
 
 O 
 
 The stairs were scarcely more than a ship's 
 gangway. Mrs. Carruth politely suppressed her 
 sense of horrified inadequacy to the ascent, and 
 she climbed up as bravely as possible. Helen's 
 cast-down eyes observed the uncarpeted steps of 
 old, stained pine-wood. She was still silent when 
 they entered the study. Bayard bustled about, offer- 
 ing Mrs. Carruth the bony rocking-chair with the 
 turkey-red cushion. The Professor had already 
 ensconced himself in the revolving study-chair, 
 a luxury which had been recently added to the 
 room. There remained for Helen the lounge, and 
 Bayard, perforce, seated himself beside her. He 
 did not remark upon the deficiency of furniture. 
 He seemed as much above an apology for the lack 
 of upholstery as a martyr in prison, jf His face was 
 radiant with a pleasure which no paltry thought 
 could poison. The simple occasion seemed to him 
 one of high festivity. It would have been impos- 
 sible for any one of these comfortable people to 
 understand what it meant to the poor fellow to 
 entertain old friends in his lonely quarters. 
 
 Helen's eyes assumed a blank, polite look ; she 
 said as little as possible at first ; she seemed ad- 
 justing herself to a shock. Mrs. Carruth warbled 
 on about the opening of the season at the Main- 
 sail, and the Professor inquired about the effects 
 
204 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 of the recent gales upon the fishing classes. He 
 avoided all perilous personalities as adroitly as if 
 he had been fencing with a German radical over 
 the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. It was 
 Bayard himself who boldly approached the dan 
 gerous ground. 
 
 " You came on Saturday, I suppose ? I did not 
 know anything about it till this minute." 
 
 " We did not come till night," observed Helen 
 hurriedly. " Mother was very tired. We did not 
 go out anywhere yesterday." 
 
 "The Professor did, I'll be bound," smiled 
 Bayard. " Went to church, did n't you, Pro- 
 fessor?" 
 
 " Ye es," replied Professor Carruth, hesitat- 
 ing. " I never omit divine service if I am on my 
 feet." 
 
 " Did you hear Fen ton ? " asked Bayard with 
 perfect ease of manner. 
 
 " Yes," more boldly from the Professor, " I at- 
 tended the First Church. I like to recognize The 
 Denomination wherever I may be traveling. I 
 always look up my old boys, of course,, too. It 
 seems to be a prosperous parish." 
 
 "It is a prosperous parish," assented Bayard 
 heartily. " Fenton is doing admirably with it, 
 Did you hear him ? " 
 
 " Why yes," replied the Professor, breathing 
 more freely. "I heard Fenton. He did well 
 quite well. He has not that scope of intellect 
 which I never considered him our ablest man ; 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 205 
 
 but his theology is perfectly satisfactory. He 
 preached an excellent doctrinal sermon. The 
 audience was not so large as I could have wished ; 
 but it seemed to be of a superior quality some 
 of your first citizens, I should say ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, our first people all attend that 
 church. You did n't find many of my crowd 
 there, I presume ? " 
 
 Bayard laughed easily. 
 
 " I did not recognize it," said the Professor, 
 "as a distinctly fishing community from the 
 audience ; no, not from that audience." 
 
 " Not many of my drunkards, for instance, sir ? 
 Not a strong salt-fish perfume in the First Church ? 
 Nor a whiff of old New England rum anywhere ? " 
 
 " The atmosphere was irreproachable," returned 
 the Professor with a keen look. 
 
 Bayard glanced at Helen, who had been sitting 
 quietly on the sofa beside him. Her eyes returned 
 his merriment. 
 
 " Father ! " she exclaimed, " Mr. Bayard does 
 not recant. He is proud of it. He glories in his 
 heresy. He is laughing at his martyrdom and 
 at us. I think you 'd better 4 let up ' on him 
 awhile." 
 
 " Let up, Helen ? Let up ? " complained her 
 mother. " That is a very questionable expression. 
 Ask your father, my dear, if it is good English. 
 And I 'm sure Mr. Bayard will be a gentlemanly 
 heretic, whatever he is." 
 
 Helen laughed outright, now. Bayard joined 
 
206 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 her ; and the four drew breath and found them- 
 selves at their ease. 
 
 u For my part," said Helen unexpectedly, "I 
 should like to see Mr. Bayard's church if he 
 would stoop to invite us. ... I suppose," she 
 added thoughtfully, "one reason saints don't 
 stoop, is for fear the halo should tumble, off. It 
 must be so inconvenient ! Don't you ever have a 
 stiff neck, Mr. Bayard?" 
 
 "Why, Helen! " cried Mrs. Carruth in genuine 
 horror. She hastened to atone for her daughter's 
 rudeness to a young man who already had enough 
 to bear. " I will come and bring Helen myself, 
 Mr. Bayard, to hear you preach that is, if you 
 would like to have us." 
 
 " Pray don't ! " protested Bayard. " The Pro- 
 fessor's hair would turn black again in a single 
 night. It won't do for you to recognize an outlaw 
 like me, you know. Why, Fenton and I have n't 
 met since he came here ; unless at the post-office. 
 I understand my position. Don't feel any delicacy 
 about it. / don't. I can't stop for that ! I am 
 too busy." 
 
 The Professor of Theology colored a little. 
 
 " The ladies of my family are quite free to visit 
 any of the places of worship around us," he ob- 
 served with some dignity. " They are not bound 
 by the same species of ecclesiastical etiquette " 
 
 " We must be going, Mother," said Helen ab- 
 ruptly. Her cheeks were blazing ; her eyes met 
 Bayard's with a ray of indignant sympathy which 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 207 
 
 went to his head like wine. He felt the light, 
 quick motion of her breath ; the folds of her sum- 
 mer dress he could not have told what she wore 
 fell over the carpet lounge ; the hem of the 
 dress touched his boot, and just covered the patch 
 on it from sight. He had but glanced at her 
 before. He looked at her now; her heightened 
 color became her richly ; her hand she wore a 
 driving-glove lay upon the cretonne sofa pillow ; 
 she had picked a single flower as she came up 
 Mrs. Granite's garden walk. /I Bayard was amused 
 to see that she had instinctively taken a deep pur- 
 ple pansy with a heart of gold. / 
 
 A little embarrassed, Helen held out the pansy. 
 
 " I like them," she said. " They ma,ke faces at 
 me." 
 
 44 This one is a royal creature," said Bayard. 
 " It has the face of a Queen." 
 
 "Mr. Bayard," asked Mrs. Carruth, with the 
 air of starting a subject of depth and force. " do 
 you find any time to analyze flowers ? " 
 
 " So far hardly," replied Bayard, looking 
 Helen straight in the face. 
 
 44 1 used to study botany when I was a young 
 lady in New York," observed Mrs. Carruth 
 placidly ; 44 it seems to me a very wholesome and 
 refining " 
 
 44 Papa ! " cried Helen, 44 Pepper is eating a 
 tomato can No, it 's a piece of It is an 
 apron a gingham apron ! The menu of that 
 horse, Mr. Bayard, surpasses anything " 
 
208 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 "It is plainly some article belonging to the 
 ladies of the house," said Bayard, laughing. 
 
 He had started to rescue the apron, when Jane 
 Granite was seen to run out and wrench that por- 
 tion of her wardrobe from Pepper's voracity. 
 
 " That," observed Mrs. Carruth, " is the maid, 
 I presume ? " 
 
 " It is Miss Granite, my landlady's daughter," 
 replied Bayard with some unnecessary dignity. 
 Poor little Jane, red in the face, and raging at the 
 heart, stood, with the eyes of the visitors upon her, 
 contending with Pepper, who insisted on retaining 
 the apron strings, and had already swallowed one 
 halfway. 
 
 Quick to respond to the discomfort of any 
 woman, Bayard ran down to Jane's relief. 
 
 " It blew over from the lines," said Jane. She 
 lifted to him her sad, grateful eyes. She woiJd 
 have cried, if she had ventured to speak. Helen, 
 from the window, looked down silently. 
 
 When Bayard came upstairs again, his visitors 
 had risen to leave, in earnest. Helen avoided his 
 eyes. He felt that hers had taken in every detail 
 of his poor place: the iron angel on the ugly 
 stove ; the Cupid and the grapes upon the paper 
 screen ; the dreary, darned, brown carpet ; the 
 barren shades ; the mosquito-net portiere ; the 
 whole homeless, rude, poverty-smitten thing. 
 
 " You have a fine engraving of Guido's Saint 
 Michael, here," observed Professor Carruth, taking 
 out his glasses. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 209 
 
 " And I notice don't I see another good pic- 
 ture through the gauze portiere ? " asked Mrs. Car- 
 ruth modestly. 
 
 " That is Leonardo's Christ," said the Professor 
 promptly, at a look. " It really makes a singular, 
 I may say a beautiful, impression behind that white 
 stuff. I never happened to see it before with 
 such an effect. Look, Helen! It seems like a 
 transparency or a cloud." 
 
 A devout expression touched Helen's face, which 
 had grown quite grave. She did not answer, and 
 went downstairs behind her mother, very quietly. 
 
 Jane Granite had disappeared. Pepper was 
 engaged in a private conflict with such portions of 
 her wardrobe as he had succeeded in swallow- 
 ing ; Mrs. Carruth mounted heavily into the 
 carryall, and Helen leaped after her. Then it 
 appeared that the Professor had forgotten his 
 cane, and Bayard ran back for it. As he came 
 down, he caught a glimpse of Jane Granite in the 
 sitting-room. She was crying. 
 
 " That is my Charter Oak cane," observed the 
 Professor anxiously ; " the one with the handle 
 made from the old ship Constitution. I would n't 
 have mislaid it on any account." 
 
 " Father would rather have mislaid me,!' said 
 Helen with an air of conviction. Her mother was 
 inviting Mr. Bayard to call on them at the Fly- 
 ing Jib. Helen said nothing on this point. She 
 smiled and nodded girlishly, and Pepper bore 
 them away. 
 
210 A SINGULAR, LIFE. 
 
 Bayard came back upstairs three steps at a 
 time. The sitting-room door was shut, and it did 
 not occur to him to open it. He had quite forgot- 
 ten Jane. He closed his study-door softly, and 
 went and sat down on the carpet lounge ; the 
 pansy that she had dropped was there. He 
 looked for it, and looked at it, then laid it gently 
 on his study-table. He took up the cretonne 
 pillow where her hand had lain, then put it softly 
 down. 
 
 "I must keep my head," thought the young 
 man. He passed his hand over his too brilliant 
 eyes, and went, with compressed lips, to his study- 
 table. 
 
 But Jane Granite went out in the back yard, 
 and sat down under the clothes-lines, on the salt- 
 fish box. The chewed apron was in her hand. 
 The clothes flapped in the rising wind above her 
 head. She could not be seen from the house. 
 Here she could cry in peace. 
 
 She was surprised to find, when she was seated 
 there, that she did not want to cry. Her eyes, her 
 throat, her lips, her head, seemed burning to ashes. 
 Hot, hard, wicked wishes came for the first time 
 in her gentle life to Jane. That purple-and-gold 
 woman swam giddily between her and the summer 
 sky. 
 
 Jane had known her at the first look. Her soul 
 winced when she recognized the stranger of the 
 electric car. Mr. Bayard had thought Jane did 
 not notice that lady that April day. Jane had by 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 211 
 
 heart every line and tint and detail of her, from 
 the gold dagger on her bonnet to the dark purple 
 cloth gaiter of her boots ; from her pleased brown 
 eyes, with the well-bred motion of their lids, to the 
 pretty gestures that^she made with her narrow^ 
 gloved hand. Jane looked at her own wash-day 
 dress and parboiled fingers. The indefinable, un- 
 deniable fact of the stranger's personal elegance 
 crushed the girl with the sense of helpless bitter- 
 ness which only women who have been poor and 
 gone shabby can understand. The language of 
 dress, which is to the half-educated the symbol 
 of superiority, conveyed to Jane, in advance of any 
 finer or truer vocabulary, the full force of the 
 situation. 
 
 " She is different," thought Jane. 
 
 These three words said it all. Jane dropped her 
 face in her soaked and wrinkled fingers. The damp 
 clothes flapped persistently about her neat, brown 
 head, as if trying to arouse her with the useless 
 diversion of things that one is quite used to. Jane 
 thought of Ben Trawl, it is true, but without any 
 distinct sense of disloyalty or remorse. She ex- 
 perienced the ancient and always inexplicable emo- 
 tion not peculiar to Jane : she might have lived on 
 in relative content, not in the least disturbed by 
 any consciousness of her own ties, as long as the 
 calm eyes she worshiped reflected the image of no 
 other woman. Now something in Jane's heart 
 seemed to snap and let lava through. 
 
 Oh, purple and gold, gall and wormwood, beauty 
 
212 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 and daintiness, heart-ache and fear ! Had the 
 Queen come to the palace of Kubla Khan ? Let 
 Alph, the sacred river, run ! Who was she, Jane 
 Granite, that she should stem the sweeping cur- 
 rent? 
 
 "... Crying again? This is a nice way to 
 greet a fellar," said roughly a sudden voice in 
 Jane's dulled ear. 
 
 Ben Trawl lifted the damp clothes, strode 
 through between the poles, and stood beside his 
 promised wife. His face was ominously dark. 
 
XIV. 
 
 IT is not so hard to endure suffering as to resist 
 ease. The passion for martyrdom sweeps every- 
 thing before it, as long as it is challenged by no 
 stronger force. Emanuel Bayard had lived for a 
 year upon the elixir of a spiritual exaltation such 
 as has carried men to a glowing death, or through 
 a tortured life without a throb of weakness. He 
 had yet to adjust his nature to the antidote of com- 
 mon human comfort. 
 
 Like most of the subtler experiences of life, this 
 came so naturally that, at first, he scarcely knew it 
 by sight or name. 
 
 It was not a noteworthy matter to show the 
 courtesies of civilized life to the family of his old 
 Professor. Bayard reminded himself of this as 
 he walked down the Point. 
 
 It was quite a week before he found leisure to 
 attend to this simple, social obligation. His duties 
 in Angel Alley had been many and laborious ; it 
 did not occur to him to shorten a service or an 
 entertainment ; to omit a visit to the wharves when 
 the crews came in, or to put by the emergency of 
 a drunkard's wife to a more convenient season 
 because he had in view that which had grown so 
 rare to the young man, now the experience of a 
 
214 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 personal luxury. Like a much older and more 
 ascetic man than he was, he counted the beads on 
 his rosary of labors conscientiously through. Then 
 he hurried to her. 
 
 Now, to women of leisure nothing is so incom- 
 prehensible as the preoccupation of a seriously 
 busy man. Bayard had not counted upon this 
 feminine fact: indeed, he lived in a world where 
 feminine whim was an element as much outside his 
 calculation as the spring fashions of the planet 
 Uranus. He was quite at a loss when Miss Car- 
 ruth received him distantly. 
 
 The Flying Jib was, as to its exterior, an ugly 
 little cottage run out on the neck of the jutting 
 reef that formed the chief attraction of the Main- 
 sail Hotel. The interior of the Flying Jib varied 
 from a dreary lodge to a summer home, according 
 to the nature of the occupants. It seemed to 
 Bayard that season absurdly charming. He had 
 lived so long out of his natural world, that the 
 photographs and rugs, the draperies, the flowers, 
 the embroidery, the work-baskets, the bric-a-brac, 
 the mere presence of taste and of ladies, appeared 
 to him at first essential luxury. He looked about 
 him with a sigh of delight, while Mrs. Carruth 
 went to call her daughter, who had gone over to 
 the fish-house study with the Professor, and who 
 .could be seen idling along home over the meadow, 
 a stately figure in a pale, yellow summer dress s 
 with a shade hat, and pansies on it. 
 
 As we say, that young lady at first received Bay- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 215 
 
 ard coolly. She sauntered into the little parlor 
 with her hands full of sweet-briar, nodded to him 
 politely, and excused herself at once to arrange her 
 flowers. This took her some time. Mrs. Carruth 
 entertained him placidly. Helen's eyes saw but did 
 not seem to see the slightest motion of his nervous 
 hand, each tone of expression that ran over his 
 sensitive face. He had looked so eager and happy 
 when she came ; almost boyishly thirsting for that 
 Httle pleasure ! She had that terrible inability to 
 understand the facts of his life or feeling which 
 is responsible for most of the friction between two 
 half-attracted or half-separating human beings. 
 But when she saw the light die from his eyes, when 
 she saw that hurt look which she knew quite well, 
 settle about the lower part of his face, Helen was 
 ashamed of herself. Mrs. Carruth was mildly 
 introducing the subject of mosquito bars; theirs, 
 she said, were all on the second story ; the supply 
 didn't go round, and the Professor objected to 
 them ; so the hornets 
 
 " Mother," said Helen, " I wonder if Mr. Bayard 
 would n't like to have us show him the clam 
 study?" 
 
 " Your father said he should be at work on the 
 * State of the Unforgiven after Death,' " replied 
 Mrs. Carruth. " I don't know that we ought to 
 disturb him ; do you think we ought, Helen ? '' 
 
 " He was whittling a piece of mahogany for the 
 head of a cane when I left him," said Helen 
 irreverently ; "he stole it out of the cabin of that 
 
216 A SINGULAR LIFE, 
 
 old wreck in the inner harbor. Do you think a 
 Professor of Theology could be forgiven after death 
 for sneak-thieving, Mr. Bayard ? " 
 
 She abandoned the idea of visiting the clam 
 study, however, and seated herself with frank 
 graciousness by their visitor. Mrs. Carruth hav 
 ing strolled away presently to keep some elderly 
 tryst among the piazza ladies of the hotel, the 
 young people were left alone. 
 
 They sat for a moment in sudden, rather awkward 
 silence. Helen looked like a tall June lily, in her 
 summer gown ; she had taken her hat off ; her hair 
 was a little tumbled and curly ; the wind blew in 
 strong from the sea, tossing the lace curtains of the 
 Flying Jib like sails on a toy boat. The scent of 
 the sweet-briar was delicately defined in the room. 
 Bayard looked at her without any attempt to speak. 
 She answered his silent question by saying, ab- 
 ruptly : - 
 
 " You know you '11 have to forgive me, whether 
 you want to, or not. " 
 
 " Forgive you ? " 
 
 " Why, for being vexed. I was a .little, at first. 
 But I needn't have been such a schoolgirl as to 
 show it." 
 
 " If you would be so kind as to tell me what I 
 can possibly have done to deserve your displea- 
 sure " began Bayard helplessly. 
 
 " If a man does n't understand without being 
 told, I 've noticed he cant understand when he is 
 told. . . . Why didn't you wait till next fall be- 
 fore you came to see us, Mr. Bayard ? " 
 
A SINGULAR LI*FE. 217 
 
 " Oh I " said Bayard. His happy look came 
 back to his tired face, as if a magic lantern had 
 shifted a beautiful slide. " Is that it? " 
 
 He laughed delightedly. " Why, I suppose I 
 ^rnust have seemed rude neglectful, at any rate= 
 But I 've noticed that if a woman does n't under- 
 stand without being told, she makes up for it by 
 her readiness of comprehension when she is told." 
 
 " What a nice, red coal ! " smiled Helen. " The 
 top of my head feels quite warm. Dear me ! 
 Is n't there a spot burned bald ? " 
 
 She felt anxiously of her pretty hair. 
 
 4< Come over and see my work," said Bayard, 
 " and you '11 never ask me again why I did n't do 
 anything I would so much rather do." 
 
 " I never asked you before ! " flashed Helen. 
 
 " You did me an honor that I shall remember," 
 said Bayard gravely. 
 
 " Oh, please don't ! Pray forget it as soon as 
 you can," cried Helen, with red cheeks. 
 
 " You can't know, you see you can't know, how 
 a man situated as I am prizes the signs of the 
 simplest human friendship that is sincere and 
 womanly." 
 
 So said Bayard quietly. Helen drew a little 
 quick breath. She seemed reconciled now, to 
 herself, and to him. They began to talk at 
 once, quite fast and freely. Afterwards he tried 
 to remember what it had all been about, but he 
 found it not easy ; the evening passed on wings 
 he felt the atmosphere of this little pleasure with 
 
218 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 a delight impossible to be understood by a man 
 who had not known and graced society and left it. 
 Now and then he spoke of his work, but Helen 
 did not exhibit a marked interest in the subject. 
 
 Bayard drew the modest inference that he had 
 obtruded his own affairs with the obtuseness 
 common to missionaries and other zealots : he 
 roused himself to disused conversation, and to 
 the forgotten topics of the world. It did not 
 occur to him that this was precisely what she in- 
 tended. The young lady drew him out, and drew 
 him on. They chatted about Cesarea and Beacon 
 Street, about Art, Clubs, Magazine literature, and 
 the Symphony Concerts, like the ordinary social 
 human being. 
 
 "You see I have been out of it so long!" 
 pleaded Bayard. 
 - " Not yet a year," corrected Helen. 
 
 " It seems to me twenty," he mused. 
 
 " You don't go to see your uncle, yet ? " 
 
 " I met him once or twice down town. I have 
 not been home, yet. But that would make no 
 difference. I have no leisure for all these 
 little things." 
 
 He said the words with such an utter absence 
 of affectation that it was impossible either to 
 smile or to take offence at them. Helen regarded 
 Mm gravely. 
 
 " There were two or three superb concerts this 
 winter. I thought of you. I wished you hao 1 
 
 some in " 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 219 
 
 " Did you take that trouble ? " he asked eagerly. 
 
 "I don't think I ever heard 'Schubert played 
 better in my life," she went on, without noticing 
 the interruption. u Schoeffelowski does do The 
 Serenade divinely." 
 
 " I used to care for that more than for any 
 other music in the world, I think," he answered 
 slowly. 
 
 " I play poorly," said Helen, " and I sing worse, 
 and the piano is rented of a Windover schoolgirl. 
 But I have got some of his renderings by heart 
 if you would care for it." 
 
 " 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 unex- 
 pectedly moved. He sat with his hand over his 
 eyes, and she sang quite through. 
 
 " Komm begliicke niich ? 
 Komm begliicke mich ! " 
 
 Her voice sank, and ceased. What tenderness ! 
 
220 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 What strength! What vigor and hope and joy, 
 and forbid the thought ! what power of lov- 
 ing, 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. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 221 
 
 " 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 Heleii 
 suddenly. 
 
 He smiled a little sadly, and this time unex- 
 pectedly 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 5 " ex- 
 plained 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 Unfor- 
 given will appreciate it." 
 
 " You are not a dull woman," observed Bayard 
 uncomfortably. " You don't for an instant sup- 
 pose 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 ito 
 
 " 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. 
 
222 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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." 
 
 " Did n't you ? It does not signify. It does n'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 '11 turn up some day in the anxious seat 
 when you don't expect me. I '11 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 cha- 
 rade." 
 
 Helen looked at him. Defiance and deference 
 battled in her brown eyes ; for that instant, possi- 
 bly, 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 223 
 
 she looked at it. She struggled with herself, but 
 made no reply. 
 
 " If I am honored with your presence," con- 
 tinued 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, uncer- 
 tain 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 in- 
 tellectual 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 
 
224 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 out. Shadows of figures passed and repassed. 
 The Professor had settled the state of the Unfor- 
 given, 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 imperti- 
 nent, 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 beg-liicke mich ? 
 Begliicke 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 vvent 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 have n'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. Are n'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 does n'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 
 
226 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 wo- 
 man 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 con- 
 science from a too tender or too tempting situation 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 227 
 
 is as opaque as a gravestone to the feminine per- 1 
 ception. 
 
 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 them- <! 
 selves 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 moodi- 
 ness, 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 
 
228 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 re- 
 port to-morrow. Thank you. 
 
 Yours, E. B. 
 
 When Bayard reached her mother's piazza the 
 next evening, Helen was in the middle of the har- 
 bor. 
 
 " My daughter is considered a good oarswoman, 
 I believe," said the Professor with a troubled 
 look. " I know nothing about these matters my- 
 self. 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. Bay- 
 ard ! I will put another boat at your service 
 that is I suppose you understand the use of 
 oars?" 
 
 " Better than I do Verbal Inspiration, Pro- 
 fessor ! " 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. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 229 
 
 " 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 affectionate- 
 ness 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. Eeally, 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 pur- 
 sued, 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, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 gram- 
 mar 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 231 
 
 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. 
 
 " Did n't you know better than to take this 
 shell so far with the tide setting out?" he de- 
 manded. " 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. Pie 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 petu- 
 lance. Bayard did not watch her. 
 
 Captain Hap crossed their course, rowing home 
 in an old green dory full of small bait pollock 
 
232 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 passen- 
 ger, and the dory in tow, with discrimination. 
 
 " Lady shipwrecked ? " he yelled, after some re- 
 flection. 
 
 " No, sir," answered Helen, smiling in spite of 
 herself ; " captured by pirates." 
 
 " Teach ye bet-ter ! " howled Captain Hap. 
 44 Had n't oughter set out in short cho-ops ! Had n't 
 oughter set out in a craft like that nohow ! They 
 palm off them eggshells on boarders for bo-o- 
 oats I " 
 
 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." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 233 
 
 " 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," ob- 
 served 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 does n'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 boat- 
 ing-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 
 
234 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 would n't have hurt me a bit to wait your 
 leisure. But I 'm not . . you see . . I 'in 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 toler- 
 ance as you do to other working men." 
 
 " Yes," returned Helen ; " we always wait a 
 week for a carpenter, and ten days for the plumb- 
 ers. 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, clasp- 
 ing her hands behind her head ; " I made myself 
 lovely, that 's all." 
 
 " That might be enough, I should fancy," ven- 
 tured the young man under his breath. 
 
 " I took her shopping," said Helen. 
 
 " Took her shopping ! " 
 
 "Why, 3^es. She wanted to buy some mourn- 
 ing. She said Johnny's father had been dead so 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 235 
 
 long, her black was all worn out. She wanted 
 fresh crape. So I took her round he stores, and 
 got her some." 
 
 " Bought her crape ? " 
 
 " Yes. I got her a crape veil oh, and a bon- 
 net. 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 '11 
 stay awhile now. She says they would n't give her 
 any mourning at the Home. She said that was all 
 she had 4 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 4 depressed ' her. A 
 Winclover widow is a problem in sociology." 
 
 " Johnny's mother is the other kind of woman ; 
 I can see that," replied Helen. " She sits by her- 
 self, and puts her face in her hands. She does n'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, 
 es 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." 
 
236 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " 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 backs 
 Did you ever notice his resemblance to a mack= 
 erel?" 
 
 "I had n't thought of it in that light. I see 
 now what it was. It takes you to discover it ! " 
 
 " Johnny's mother loolis like a cod, poor thing ! " 
 continued Helen. " I don't wonder. I should think 
 she would. 1 '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 have n't 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 237 
 
 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 argu- 
 ment. 
 
 "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. 
 
 " You see," she interposed, " I 've never done 
 this kind of thing. I 'm not a good Professor's 
 daughter. I did n'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 
 
238 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 prayed, and then asked if they might be called 
 the lilies of the valley. I told them they were n'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 har- 
 bor. The wind had gone down with the sun. 
 Boats crept in like tired people, through the sud- 
 den calm, to anchor for the night. The even- 
 ing 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. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 239 
 
 " 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 cougned 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 sound- 
 ings. He drowned himself in it with a perilous 
 delight. 
 
 What would a lonely fate be, if a woman capa- 
 jble of understanding the highest, and serving it, 
 I capacious for tenderness, and yielding it, a woman 
 
 
240 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 partik- 
 kelar." 
 
 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 Dmnkhard 
 
 OO 
 
 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 nai've 
 language : " I hear when you talk to folks they 
 stop drinking. I wish you 'd talk to me." Con- 
 trary 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 fisher- 
 man, 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 mira- 
 
242 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 cle 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 would n'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, in- 
 stinctively 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 under- 
 stood to contain the acme of personal peril or dis- 
 grace. To talk to a man about "your standing 
 in this community" was equivalent to an insult 
 or a scandal. Poor Mrs. Granite, an affection- 
 ate and helpless parrot, reechoed 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 ?/s," sobbed 
 Mrs. Granite ; " we set just as much by yon. 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, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 243 
 
 Mr. Bayard, don't you go to Ragged Rock alone, 
 sir, this time o' night to meet no torn-fool of a drunk- 
 ard 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 get- 
 ting 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 '11 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 minis- 
 ter ; read the note, and was about to tear it into 
 strips. 
 
 " I '11 take it, thank you," said Bayard quietly, 
 holding out his hand. 
 
 " Mr. Bayard," said Jane, who had not spoken 
 before, u I hope you will pay no attention to this 
 message." 
 
244 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 She spoke in a voice so low as to be almost inar- 
 ticulate. 
 
 " Oh, I '11 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 245 
 
 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, begliicke 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 know- 
 ing 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 
 
246 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 un- 
 pleasant 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 neg- 
 lect 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 '11 teach you to mind your own 
 business ! " 
 
 Before Bayard could cry out or move, he felt the 
 other's hands at his throat. 
 
xvn. 
 
 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 minis- 
 ter 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 could n't be ex- 
 pected 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, per- 
 haps ? " asked Bayard quietly. " I had n't thought 
 of that. But I see it would not have been diffi- 
 cult. A man can be taken unawares in the dark, 
 and as you say, there would have been no wit- 
 nesses." 
 
248 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " 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 ex- 
 plain 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 249 
 
 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 unneces- 
 sary 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 '11 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 . 
 46 I ain't got half through yet. I 've got another 
 
250 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 sup- 
 pose ! 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 warn- 
 ing on the spot, Mr. Bayard. You stop just where 
 you be. Meddle with our business one inch fur- 
 ther, and you'll hear from the whole liquor 
 interest of Windover. We '11 blow you into eter- 
 nity 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 '11 ruin yourn." 
 
 " That is quite possible," returned Bayard ; 
 66 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 251 
 
 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 temper- 
 ance ? There has n't been an outrage, a persecu- 
 tion, 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 have n'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." 
 
 64 The worse for you, then ! " returned Ben in 
 an ugly tone. 
 
 44 1 '11 risk it," replied Bayard serenely. 
 
 44 There 's them that says you 're goin' to fight 
 it out at the polls," said Ben, more sullenly now 
 
252 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 than savagely. " Folks says you 're goin' to get 
 away Father's license." 
 
 " I had n't thought of it tiU this minute I " 
 exclaimed the preacher. ll 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 have n't decided." 
 
 " Not that /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 gos- 
 sip of Windover loose upon her." 
 
 "It is a hell of a town, if you come to that,' 5 
 said Ben with calm conviction. 
 
 " She is much too good for you, Ben Trawl,' 1 
 remarked Bayard quite politely, as if he were 
 offering the other a glass of lemonade. 
 
 " Lord ! " groaned Ben, writhing under the min- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 253 
 
 ister's manner. " Don't you suppose that 's the 
 worst on 't ? " 
 
 " I think 1 11 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 temper^ 
 ance 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 anony- 
 mous 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 begin- 
 ning to end. 
 
xvni. 
 
 A FIERY July was followed by a scorching Au- 
 gust, 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, watch- 
 ing for the two o'clock east wind to stir the top- 
 sails 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 him- 
 self 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. After- 
 wards, 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 pur- 
 ple 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 255 
 
 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 e 
 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 be- 
 fore 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 qniet, 
 maidenly reserve of an elder and more delicate day 
 than ours. To throw her young enthusiasm into 
 his work without obtruding herself upon his atten- 
 tion, was a difficult procedure, for which she had 
 at once the decorum and the wit. 
 
 At unexpected crises an.d in unthought-of ways 
 he carne upon her footprints or her sleight-of-hand, 
 Helen's methods were purely her own. She fol= 
 lowed neither law nor gospel ; no rules or prece- 
 dents controlled her. She relieved what suffering 
 she chose, and omitted where she did elect; and 
 he was sometimes astonished at the common sense 
 of her apparent willfulness. She had no more 
 
256 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 training in sociological problems than the golden- 
 rod upon the bosom of her white gown ; yet she 
 seldom made a serious mistake. In a word, this 
 summer girl, playing at charity for a season's 
 amusement, poured a refreshing amount of nov- 
 elty, vigor, ingenuity, and feminine defiance of 
 routine into the labors of the lonely man. His 
 too serious and anxious people found her as di- 
 verting as a pretty parlor play. A laugh ran 
 around like a light flame whenever she came upon 
 the sombre scene. She took a bevy of idle girls 
 with her, and gave entertainments on which Angel 
 Alley hung, a breathless and admiring crowd. 
 She played, she sang, she read, she decorated. 
 Pictures sprang on barren walls ; books stood on 
 empty shelves ; games crowded the smoking-room ; 
 a piano replaced the painstaking melodeon ; life 
 and light leaped where she trod, into the poor and 
 unpopular place. The people took to her one of 
 the strong, loyal fancies of the coast. Unsuspected 
 by her, or by himself, she began, even then, to be 
 known among them as " the minister's girl." But 
 this hurt nobody, neither herself nor him, and 
 kheir deference to her. never defaulted. In the 
 indulgence of that summer's serious mood, Helen 
 seldom met, he was forced to suspect that she pur- 
 posely avoided, the preacher. /Often he entered a 
 laughing home from which she had just vanished. 
 Sometimes but less often he found that she 
 had preceded him where death and trouble were. 
 ''Their personal interviews were rare, and of her 
 seeking, never. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 257 
 
 " She is amusing herself with a novelty," he 
 thought. Then came the swift, unbidden question, 
 If this is her beautiful whim, what would her dedi- 
 cation be ? 
 
 Since, to play at helping a man's work, though 
 at the tip of the sceptre by which he held her 
 back, meant sense and sympathy, fervor and cour- 
 age like this, what would it be to the great and sol- 
 emn purpose of his life, if she shared it, crowned 
 queen ? 
 
 It was an August evening, sultry and smoky. 
 Forest fires had been burning for a week on the 
 wooded side of the harbor, and the air was thick. 
 It was Sunday, and the streets and wharves and 
 beaches of Windover surged with vacuous eyes 
 and irritable passions. The lock-ups were full, the 
 saloons overflowedo The ribald song and exces- 
 sive oath of the coast swept up and down like air 
 currents. There had been several accidents and 
 some fights. Kum ran in streams. It was one of 
 the stifling evenings when the most decent ten- 
 ement retains only the sick or the helpless, and 
 when the occupants of questionable sailors' board- 
 ing-houses and nameless dens crawl out like ver- 
 min fleeing from fire. It was one of the nights 
 when the souls of women go to perdition, and when 
 men do not argue with their vices. It was one of 
 the nights when ease and cool, luxury and delicacy, 
 forget the gehenna that they escape ; and when 
 only the strong few remember the weakness of the 
 many. 
 
258 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Upon the long beach of fine white sand which 
 spanned the space between the docks and the cliffs 
 of the wooded coast, there gathered that evening a 
 large and unusual crowd. Angel Alley was there 
 en masse. The wharves poured out a mighty del 
 egation. Dories put out from anchored vessels 
 whose prows nodded in the inner harbor, and theii 
 crews swarmed to the beach in schools, like fish to 
 a net. 
 
 A few citizens of another sort, moved, one might 
 say, from curiosity, innocent or malicious, joined 
 themselves to the fishermen and sailors. Their 
 numbers were increased by certain of the summer 
 people from the Point, drawn from their piazzas 
 and their hammocks by rumors of a sensation. An 
 out-of-door service, said to be the first of its kind 
 conducted by the remarkable young preacher of 
 such excellent family and such eccentric career, 
 was not without its attractions even on the hottest 
 evening of the season,, There might have been 
 easily eight hundred or a thousand people facing 
 the light temporary desk or pulpit which had been 
 erected at the head of the beach for the speaker's 
 use. 
 
 The hour was early, and it would have been 
 very light but for the smoke in the air, through 
 which the sun hung, quivering and sinister, with 
 the malevolent blood-red color of drought and 
 blasting heat. 
 
 " Statira," in a low tone said the puzzled voice 
 of ihe Professor of Theology, " this is I must 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 259 
 
 say really, a most extraordinary gathering. It 
 quite impresses me." 
 
 " I have read something somewhere it reminds 
 me of," mused Mrs. Carruth, with a knot between 
 her placid brows. " Where was it, Haggai ? - 
 Helen! Helen! What have I read that is like 
 this ? I can't think whether it is George Eliot, 
 or Fox's Book of Martyrs. Perhaps it is the Me- 
 moirs of Whitefield ; but certainly " 
 
 " Possibly," suggested Helen, " it may have 
 been the New Testament." 
 
 " That 's it ! You have it ! " cried Mrs, Car- 
 ruth, with mild relief. " That 's the very thing. 
 How extraordinary ! It is the New Testament I 
 have got into my head." 
 
 The Professor of Theology changed color 
 slightly, but he made no answer to his wife. He 
 was absorbed in watching the scene before him. 
 There were many women in the crowd, but men 
 predominated in proportion significant to the eye 
 familiar with the painfully feminine character of 
 New England religious audiences. Of these men, 
 four fifths were toilers of the sea, red of face, un- 
 certain of step, rough of hand, keen of eye 5 and 
 open of heart, 
 
 " Fearing no God but wind and wet." 
 
 The scent of bad liquor was strong upon the 
 heavy, windless air; oaths rippled to and fro as 
 easily as the waves upon the beach, and (it seemed) 
 quite as much according to the laws of Nature, 
 
260 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Yet the men bore a decent look of personal respect 
 for the situation. All wore their best clothes, and 
 most were clean for the occasion. They chatted 
 among themselves freely, paying small heed to the 
 presence of strangers, these being regarded as in= 
 ferior aliens who did not know how to man a boat 
 in a gale. 
 
 The fisherman's sense of his own superior posi- 
 tion is, in any event, something delightful. In this 
 case there was added the special aristocracy recog- 
 nized in Angel Alley as belonging to Bayard's 
 people. Right under the ears of the Professor of 
 Theology uprose these awful words : 
 
 " D them swells. He don't care a for 
 
 them. We get along up to Christlove without 'em, 
 don't we, Bob ? The parson 's ourn, anyhow. He 
 can't be bothered with the likes o' them." 
 
 " Look a' Job Slip yonder ! See the face of 
 him, shaved like a dude. That's him, a-passin' 
 round hymn-books. Who'd believe it? Job! 
 
 Why, he ain't teched a drop sence he swore 
 
 off ! Look a' that young one of his taggin' to his 
 finger ! That 's his wife, that bleached-out creetur 
 in a new bunnet. See the look of her now ! " 
 
 " It 's a way women have, lookin' like that 
 when a man swears off," replied a young fellow, 
 wriggling uncomfortably. " It kinder puts my 
 eyes out like it was a lamp turned up too high." 
 
 He winked hard and turned away. 
 
 " Ben Trawl ! Hello, Trawl ! You here ? So 
 fond of the minister as this? " 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 261 
 
 " I like to keep my eye on him," replied Ben 
 Trawl grimly. 
 
 Captain Hap, distributing camp-chairs for the 
 women of the audience, turned and eyed Ben over 
 his shoulder. The Captain's small, keen eyes 
 held the dignity and the scorn of age and char- 
 acter. 
 
 ;" Shut up there ! " he said authoritatively. 
 1 The minister 's comin'. Trot back to your grog- 
 hop, Ben. This ain't no place for Judases, nor 
 'et for rummies." 
 
 " Gorry," laughed a young skipper ; " he ain't 
 got customers enough to okkepy him. They 're all 
 here." 
 
 Now there sifted through the crowd an eager, 
 affectionate whisper. 
 
 " There ! There 's the preacher. Look that 
 way See? That tall, thin fellar him with 
 the eyes." 
 
 "That 'shim! That 'shim. That long-sparred 
 fellar. Three cheers for him ! " shouted the 
 mate of a collier, flinging up his hat. 
 
 A billow of applause started along the beachc 
 Then a woman's voice called out : 
 
 "Boys, he don't like it!" and the wave of 
 sound dropped as suddenly as it rose. 
 
 " He comes ! " cried an Italian. 
 
 " So he does, Tony, so he does ! " echoed the 
 woman. " God bless him ! " 
 
 " He comes," repeated Tony. " Hush you, 
 boys the Christman comes ! " 
 
262 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 The Professor of Theology pressed the tips of 
 his scholarly ringers upon his aging eyes. 
 
 It was some moments before he commanded 
 himself, and looked up. 
 
 Bayard stood bareheaded in the color of the red 
 sun. He was pale, notwithstanding the warmth of 
 the evening, and had a look so worn that those 
 who loved him most felt unspoken fear like the 
 grip of a hand at their hearts. The transparence, 
 the delicacy of his appearance, bathed in the 
 scarlet of the murky sunset, as he was, gave 
 him an aspect half unreal. /He seemed for the 
 moment to be a beautiful phantom rising from a 
 mist of blood. rjA hush, half of reverence, half of 
 awe, fell upon all the people ; it grew so still that 
 the lazy breath of the shallow wave at that mo- 
 ment spent upon the beach, could be heard stirring 
 through the calm. I 
 
 Suddenly, and before the preacher had spoken 
 any word, the impressive silence was marred by a 
 rude sound. It was a girl's coarse laugh. 
 
 Then there was seen upon the beach, and quite 
 apart from the throng, a little group of nameless 
 women, standing with their backs to the sacred 
 scene. Some one Job Slip, perhaps, or Captain 
 Hap started with an exclamation of horror to 
 suppress the disturbance, when the preacher's 
 lifted hand withstood him. To the consternation of 
 his chrrch officers, and to the astonishment of his 
 audience, Bayard deliberately left the desk, and, 
 passing through the throng, which respectfully 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 263 
 
 divided before him to left and right, himself ap- 
 proached the women. 
 
 " Lena ! . . . Magdalena I " 
 
 He said but that word. The girl looked up . 
 and down. She felt as if an archangel from the 
 heavens, commissioned with the rebuke of God, 
 had smitten her with something far more terrible 
 the mercy of man. 
 
 " You disturb us, Lena," said the preacher gen- 
 tly. " Come." 
 
 She followed him ; and the girls behind her. 
 They hung their heads. Lena scrawled she knew 
 not what with the tip of her gaudy parasol upon 
 the beach. Her heavy eyes traced the little peb- 
 bles in the sand. For her life, she thought, she 
 could not have lifted her smarting lids. Till that 
 moment, perhaps, Lena had never known what 
 shame meant. It overwhelmed her, like the 
 deluge which one dreams may foretell the end of 
 the world. 
 
 The street girls followed the preacher silently. 
 He conducted them gently through the throng, 
 and seated them quite near the desk or table 
 which served him as a pulpit. Some of his people 
 frowned. The girls looked abashed at this cour- 
 tesy. 
 
 Bayard ignored both evidences of attention to 
 his unexpected act, passing it by as a matter of 
 course, and without further delay made signs to 
 his singers, and the service began. 
 
264 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Was it magic or miracle ? Was it holiness or 
 eloquence ? Did he speak with the tongue of 
 man or of angel ? Where was the secret ? What 
 was the charm ? Not a man or woman of them 
 could have answered, but not a soul of them 
 could have gainsaid the power of the preacher i 
 the Professor of Theology least of all. This 
 learned man stood the service out, upon the beach, 
 behind the camp-chairs of his wife and daughter, 
 and knew neither fatigue nor the critical faculty, 
 till the beautiful worship drew to its end. 
 
 Bayard's manner was quiet, finished, and per- 
 suasive ; it must have appealed to the most fastidi- 
 ous oratorical taste ; any instructor in homiletics 
 might have seen in it a remarkable illustration of 
 the power of consecrated education over ignorance 
 and vice. But Bayard's thought threw off eccle- 
 siastical form as naturally as the gulls, arising 
 from the harbor in the reddening sunset, tossed off 
 the spray from their wings. No class of men are 
 more responsive to originality than sea-going men. 
 Of the humdrum, the commonplace, they will 
 naught. Cant they scorn, and at religious snob- 
 bery they laugh. 
 
 i It would be difficult to say what it was in Eman- 
 'uel Bayard that most attracted them : whether his 
 sincerity or his intellect, his spirituality or his 
 manliness ; or that mystical charm which comes 
 not of striving, or of prayer, or of education 
 the power of an elect personality. Perhaps it 
 would be nearer the truth to say that the fishermen 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 265 
 
 loved him because he loved them. The idea is 
 older than the time of this biography, but it will 
 bear repeating. 
 
 The red sun dipped, and the hot night cooledc 
 Dusk purpled on the breathless water, and on the 
 long beach. A thousand restless people grew as 
 gentle as one. The outlines of the preacher's form 
 softened into the surrounding shadow ; the features 
 of his high face melted and wavered. Only his 
 appealing voice remained distinct. It seemed to be 
 the cry of a spirit more than the eloquence of a 
 man. It pleaded as no man pleads who has not 
 forgotten himself, as no man can plead who is not 
 remembered of God. Fishermen stood with one 
 foot on the beach, and one on their stranded dories, 
 like men afraid to stir. Kude, uncomfortable men 
 in the heart of the crowd thrust their heads for- 
 wards with breath held in, as still as figure-heads 
 upon a wreck. The uplifted eyes of the throng 
 took on an expression of awe. It grew dimmer, 
 and almost dark. And then, when no one could 
 see the pathos of his face, they knew that he was 
 praying for their souls. Some of the men fell upon 
 their knees ; but the heads of others got no lower 
 than their guilty breasts, where they hung like 
 children's. The sound of stifled sobbing mingled 
 with the sigh of the waves. 
 
 The unseen singers, breathing upon the last 
 words of the prayer, chanted a solemn benediction. 
 The tide was rising slowly, and the eternal Amen 
 of the sea responded. Suddenly a lantern flashed 
 
266 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 and another and light and motion broke upon 
 the scene. 
 
 Rough men looked into one another's wet faces, 
 and were not ashamed. But some held their hats be- 
 fore their eyes. The girls in the front chairs moved 
 away quietly, speaking to no person. But Lena 
 separated herself from them, and disappeared in 
 the dark. Job Slip had not arisen from his knees, 
 and Mari, his wife, knelt by him. The woman's 
 expression was something touching to see, and im- 
 possible to forget. Captain Hap held a lantern up, 
 and Bayard's face shone out, rapt and pale. 
 
 " Behold the Christman ! " said the Italian, re- 
 peating his favorite phrase in a reverent whisper. 
 
 The Professor of Theology heard it again ; and 
 repetition did not weaken its effect upon the Or- 
 thodox scholar. He removed his hat from his gray 
 head. His wife held her delicate handkerchief to 
 her eyes. Helen, struggling with herself, was pale 
 with emotion. The Professor tried to speak. 
 
 " It is not," he said, " precisely a doctrinal dis- 
 course, and his theology " 
 
 The Professor checked himself. " It is written," 
 he said, " that the common people heard HIM gladly. 
 And it must be admitted that our dear young 
 friend, His servant, seems to command that which 
 
 men older and sounder than he, would give 
 their lives and fame to " 
 
 But there he choked, and tried to say no more. 
 
 There ought to have been a moon that night, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 267 
 
 and the electric jets at the crest of the beach had 
 not been lighted. By the special request of the 
 preacher, or by the forethought of the police, in 
 view, perhaps, of the unusual size of the crowd, the 
 lights now sprang out. 
 
 The throng dispersed slowly. The dark sea 
 formed a sober background to the mass of quietly 
 moving figures. The fishermen, with one foot on 
 their dories, leaped in, and pushed off ; scattered 
 crews gathered gently, and rowed soberly back to 
 their schooners. Groups collected around the 
 preacher, waiting their turns for a word from his 
 lips, or a touch from his hand. It was evident 
 that he was very tired, but he refused himself to 
 no one. 
 
 The summer people walked away softly. They 
 passed through Angel Alley on their way to take 
 the electric car. They looked up thoughtfully at 
 the illuminated words swinging over their heads in 
 fire of scarlet and white : 
 
 "THE LOVE OF CHRIST." 
 
 As she passed by the door of the mission, Helen 
 was recognized by some of the women and chil- 
 dren, who surrounded her affectionately, begging 
 for some little service at her hands. It seemed 
 to be desired that she should play or sing to 
 them. While she stood, hesitating, between her 
 father and her mother, Bayard himself, with a 
 group of fishermen around him, came up Angel 
 Alley. 
 
268 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " I will see that she is safely taken home, Pro- 
 fessor, if you care to let her stay," he said. " We 
 won't keep her perhaps half an hour ? Will that 
 do ? The people like to hear her sing ; it helps to 
 keep them out of the street." 
 
 " Mr. Bayard will look after her, Haggai," re- 
 plied Mrs. Carruth wearily. " I see no objections, 
 do you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carruth was very tired. Not to give a so- 
 ber Monday to all the drunkards of Angel Alley 
 would she have felt that she could stay another 
 hour in that mob. She never saw such sights in 
 Cesarea ; where charity took a mild, ladylike form, 
 consisting chiefly of missionary barrels, and Dor- 
 cas societies for the families of poor students who 
 had no business to have married. 
 
 The Professor took her away. He wanted to 
 tell his heretic graduate what he had thought about 
 that service on the beach; indeed, he made one 
 effort to do so, beginning slowly : 
 
 "My dear Bayard, your discourse this even- 
 
 ing"- 
 
 " To h with 'em ! " cried Captain Hap in a 
 
 thunderous sea- voice, at that moment. " Mr. Bay- 
 ard ! Mr. Bayard, sir ! Come here ! Here 's them 
 two Trawlses a-tryin' to toll Job Slip into their 
 place f Mr. Bayard ! Mr. Bayard ! " 
 
 Mr. Bayard held out his hand to his Professor, 
 and, smiling, shook his head. Then he vanished 
 down the Alley. He had lingered only to say these 
 words in Helen's ear : 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 269 
 
 " Go into the chapel and stay there till I come 
 for you. Look after Lena will you? I want 
 her kept inside. Get her to singing with you, if 
 you can." 
 
 He called back over his shoulder : 
 
 " I will bring her home, Mrs. Carruth, in half 
 an hour. I will row her home, myself. I have 
 a boat here." 
 
 Professor Carruth stood for a moment watching 
 the thronged, bright doorway into which his 
 daughter had disappeared. The fishermen and 
 the drunkards, the Windover widows in their crape 
 and calico, the plain, obscure, respectable parish- 
 ioners, and the girls from the street moved in to- 
 gether beneath the white and scarlet lights. 
 Helen's voice sounded suddenly through the open 
 windows. She sang : 
 
 " I need Thee every hour. 
 Stay Thou near by." 
 
 "Hello, Bob," said a voice in the street. 
 " That 's the minister's hymn." Groups of men 
 moved over from the grogshop to the chapel door. 
 They collected, and increased in numbers. One 
 man struck into the chorus, on a low bass, 
 
 " Stay near me, O my Saviour." 
 
 Another voice joined ; and another. Up and down 
 the street the men took the music up. From 
 Angel Alley without, and Christlove within, the 
 voices of the people met and mingled in " the par- 
 son's hymn." 
 
270 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 The Professor of Theology glanced at the illu- 
 minated words above his head. 
 
 " It is growing chilly. I am sure you will take 
 cold," complained his wife. With bared, gray 
 head the Professor walked out of Angel Alley, and 
 his old wife clung silently to his arm. She felt 
 that this was one of the moments when Mr. Car- 
 ruth should not be spoken to. 
 
 Bayard brought Helen home as he had promised; 
 and it was but a little beyond the half of the hour 
 when his dory bumped against the float. He 
 rowed her over the dim harbor with long, skillful 
 strokes ; Helen fancied that they were not as strong 
 as they might have been ; he seemed to her almost 
 exhausted. They had exchanged but a few words. 
 Midway of the harbor she hsxl said abruptly, 
 
 " Mr. Bayard, I cannot keep it to myself ! I 
 must tell you how what you said this evening on 
 the beach how that service made me feel." 
 
 " Don't ! " said Bayard quickly. Helen shrank 
 back into the stern of the dory ; she felt, for the 
 moment, terribly wounded. 
 
 " Forgive me ! " he pleaded. " I did n't feel as 
 if I could bear it that 's all." 
 
 " I am not in the habit of making a fool of 
 myself over ministers," replied Helen hotly. " I 
 never told one I liked his sermon, yet, in all my 
 life. I was going to say I meant to say I 
 will say ! " she cried, sitting up very straight, 
 " Mr. Bayard, you are better than I am ; truly, 
 infinitely, solemnly better. 1 5 ve never even tried 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 271 
 
 to be what you are. You 've done me good, as 
 well as Job, and Lena, and the rest. I wo?i't 
 go away without saying it, and I 'm going away 
 this week. . . . There ! " 
 
 She drew a long breath and leaned back. 
 
 Bayard rowed on for some moments in inscruta- 
 ble silence. It was too dark to see the expression 
 of his face. When he spoke, it was in a half- 
 articulate, tired way. 
 
 " I did not know. Are you coming back ? " 
 
 " I am going to Campo Bello with the Rollinses," 
 replied Helen briefly. " I don't expect to come 
 back again this year." 
 
 " I wonder I had not thought of it," said Bay- 
 ard slowly. " I did not," he added. 
 
 " The people will miss you," he suggested, after 
 a miserable pause. 
 
 " Oh, they will get used to that," said Helen. 
 
 " And 7?" he asked, in a tone whose anguish 
 smote suddenly upon her ears, like a mortal cry. 
 " What is to become of me ?" 
 
 " You '11 get used to it, too," she said, thrusting 
 out her hands in that way she had. 
 
 His oars dropped across his knees. 
 
 Before either of them could speak or think or 
 reason, he had caught one of her outstretched 
 hands. It lay, warm, soft, quivering, a terrible 
 temptation in the grasp of the devotee. 
 T He could have devoured it her soul and 
 body; he could have killed her with kisses; he 
 could have murdered her with love. 
 
272 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Instead, he laid Helen's hand down gently. He 
 did not so much as lift it to his starving lips. He 
 laid it down upon her own lap quite solemnly, as 
 if he relinquished something unspeakably precious. 
 He took up his oars, and rowed her home. 
 
 Neither had spoken again. Helen's heart beat 
 wildly. She dared not look at him. Under the 
 solitary lantern of the deserted float she felt his 
 strong gaze upon her, and it looked, not with the 
 eyes of angels, but with the eyes of a man. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, I love you ! " he breathed in a 
 broken voice. 
 
 Saying this, and only this, he led her to her 
 father's door, and left her. 
 
XIX. 
 
 THE mosquito-net portiere swayed softly in the 
 night wind. Emanuel Bayard sat in his study and 
 looked about the poor place, gasping-, like a man 
 who has received or given a mortal hurt. The 
 marred face of the great Christ looked through the 
 coarse, white gauze ; it seemed to scrutinize him 
 sternly ; he bowed his head before the gaze of the 
 picture. 
 
 The gradual descent from a spiritual height to 
 a practical level is, at best, a strain under which 
 the godliest nature quivers ; but Bayard experi- 
 enced the shock of a plunge. From the elation of 
 the past hour to the consternation of the present 
 moment was a long leap. 
 
 He closed his eyes to see the blood-red sunset 
 unfurling its flag over the broad beach ; he opened 
 them to see Mrs. Granite's kerosene lamp smoking 
 on the study-table of grained pine wood. The 
 retina of his soul suffered an adjustment as abrupt 
 and as severe. But an hour ago, a thousand people 
 had hung swaying upon the breath that went forth 
 from between his lips ; their upturned faces offered 
 him that most exquisite of flatteries the rever- 
 ence of a great audience for an orator who has 
 mastered them. We should remember that the 
 
274 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 religious orator stands, both in privilege and in 
 peril, apart from his kind. He may suffer at once 
 the subtlest of human dangers, and the deepest of 
 human joys. Bayard trembled yet with the exal- 
 tation of that solemn hour. 
 
 Midway between earth and heaven, commissioner 
 /between man and his Maker, he had stood tran- 
 ' scendent, well-nigh translated. ! He had floated in 
 the adoration of his people ; he had been to them 
 one of the sons of God ; he had held their bare 
 souls in his hand, j 
 
 While his head whirled with the suffocation of 
 the incense, he had stumbled. He had made the 
 misstep which to a lofty soul may give more an- 
 guish than guilt to the low. He had fallen from 
 the heights of his own faith in himself, sheer over, 
 and below the ideal which those upon whose wor- 
 shiping love he lived trustfully cherished of him. 
 
 An hour ago, he was a man of God. Now he 
 called himself less than a man among men. 
 
 Bound by every claim of spiritual and of human 
 honor to preserve the strong silence by which a 
 man protects a woman from himself, and himself 
 from her, he had weakly, to his high view it 
 seemed he had ignobly, broken it. 'He had de- 
 clared love to a woman whom he could not ask to 
 be his wife. To crown the pity of it and the shame, 
 he had turned on his heel, and left her so ! 
 
 " I have done a thing for which I would have 
 thrashed a man who had done as much by a sister 
 of mine ! " said this young apostle between his 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 275 
 
 teeth. It did not occur to him that he might be 
 liable to overestimate the situation. Religious 
 exaltation exposes a sensitive nature to mental 
 and spiritual excess as dangerous in its way as 
 physical dissipation. Bayard stood in that great 
 desert known only to fine souls, where the noblest 
 side of a man seems to take up arms against him; 
 and where the very consecrated weapons by which 
 he has battled his way to purity, unselfishness, and 
 peace turn themselves like sentient foes and smite 
 him. He seemed to stand unarmed and defence* 
 less before forces of evil whose master he had been 
 so long, that he looked upon their defiant faces 
 with more astonishment than fear. 
 
 " This is an insurrection of slaves," he thought. 
 He looked blindly about his dreary room. 
 
 44 Down ! " he said, as if he had been speaking 
 to dogs. 
 
 And now what? It seemed to his quivering 
 sensibility a proof that he had fallen to a far depth, 
 that the first, bare instinct of his anguish was not 
 to say, 44 What is my duty in this thing ? " but, 
 64 How shall I bear it?" 
 
 With that automatism of Christian habit which 
 time and trouble may teach the coldest scoffer to 
 respect, Bayard's hand groped for his Bible. We 
 have seen this touching movement in the sick, the 
 aged, the bereaved, and in the utterly alone ; and 
 who of us has been so poor in spirit as to do it 
 irreverence? In so young a man this desolate 
 instinct had a deep significance. 
 
276 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Bayard's Bible opened at the New Testament, 
 whose worn pages moved apart, at a touch, like 
 lips that would answer him. 
 
 As he took the book something fell from it to 
 the floor. He stooped, holding his finger between 
 the open leaves, and picked the object up. It was 
 a flower a pressed flower the saxifrage that 
 he had gathered from the hem of her dress on the 
 sand of the beach, that April day. 
 
 The Bible fell from his knee. He snatched 
 the dead flower to his lips, and kissed it passion- 
 ately. 
 
 " There was another, too," he hungrily said. 
 " There was a pansy. She left it on the sofa 
 pillow in this room. The pansy ! the pansy ! " 
 
 He took up the Bible, and searched feverishly. 
 But he could not find the pansy ; the truth being 
 that Jane Granite had seen it on the study-table, 
 and had dusted it away. 
 
 He laid the Bible down upon the table, and 
 seized the saxifrage. He kissed it again and 
 again ; he devoured it over and over ; he held it 
 in the palm of his hand, and softly laid his cheek 
 upon it. ... 
 
 Behind the white gauze, the Christ on the wall 
 looked down. Suddenly Bayard raised his hag- 
 gard face. The eyes of the picture and the eyes 
 of the man met. 
 
 "Anything but this everything but this 
 Thou knowest." Aloud, Bayard uttered the words 
 as if he expected to be heard. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 277 
 
 " Only this the love of man for woman 
 how canst THOU understand ? " 
 
 Bayard arose to his full height; he lifted his 
 hands till they touched the low, cracked ceiling \ 
 it seemed to him as if he lifted them into illimi- 
 table heaven ; as if he bore on them the greatest 
 mystery and the mightiest woe of all the race. 
 His lips moved; only inarticulate whispers came 
 from them. 
 
 Then his hands fell, and his face fell into them. 
 
 Bayard went to her like a man, and at once. 
 At an hour of the morning so early that he felt 
 obliged to apologize for his intrusion, his sleepless 
 face appeared at the door of her father's cottage. 
 
 He had no more idea, even yet, what he should 
 say to her than the Saint Michael over his study- 
 table. He felt in himself a kind of pictorial help- 
 lessness ; as if he represented something which he 
 was incapable of expressing. His head swam. 
 He leaned back on the bamboo chair in the parlor 
 Through the soft stirring of the lace curtains he 
 watched a fleet start out, and tack across the har- 
 bor. He interested himself in the greenish-white 
 sails of an old schooner with a new suit on. He 
 found it impossible to think coherently of the in- 
 terview which awaited him. 
 
 A hand fell on the latch of the door. He turned 
 ah! 
 
 " Good-morning, Professor," said Bayard, rising 
 manfully. His pale face, if possible, turned a shade 
 
278 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 whiter. It seemed to him the fitting sequel to his 
 weakness that he should be called to account by 
 the girl's father. " I have deserved it," he thought. 
 
 " Ah, Bayard, this is too bad ! " said the Pro- 
 fessor of Theology, cordially holding out his hand, 
 *' You have just missed my daughter. I am sure 
 she will regret it. She took the twenty minutes 
 past seven train." 
 
 " Took the train .*" panted Bayard. 
 
 " She has gone to join some friends of ours 
 the Rollinses, at Campo Bello. She did not in- 
 tend to leave for some days ; but the mood took 
 her, and off she started. I think, indeed, she went 
 without her breakfast. Helen is whimsical at 
 times. Do be seated! "We will do our poor 
 best to take my daughter's place," pursued the 
 Professor, smiling indulgently ; " and I 'm espe- 
 cially glad of this opportunity, Bayard, to tell you 
 how much I was impressed by your discourse last 
 night. I don't mind saying so at all." 
 
 "Thank you, Professor," said Bayard faintly. 
 
 " It was not theology, you know," observed the 
 Professor, still smiling ; " you can't, expect me to 
 admit that it was sound, Bayard. But I must 
 say, sir, I do say, that I defy any council in New 
 England to say it was not Christianity ! " 
 
 "Thank you, Professor," repeated Bayard, more 
 faintly than before. He found it impossible to 
 talk about theology, or even Christianity. The 
 Professor felt rather hurt that the young man 
 took his leave so soon. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 279 
 
 He had thought of inviting him into the clam 
 study, and reading some extracts from the essay 
 on the State of the Unforgiven after Death. 
 
 Bayard went back to his own rooms, and wrote 
 to her ; if he could have done so, he would have 
 followed her to Campo Bello by the next boat. 
 The pitiable fact was, that he could not raise the 
 money for the trip. It occurred to him to force 
 the occasion and borrow it of his treasurer, of 
 George Fenton, of his uncle ; but he dismissed 
 these fantasies as madness, and swiftly wrote : 
 
 
 
 I hurried to you at the first decent moment 
 this morning ; but I was not early enough by an 
 hour. 
 
 The reason why I do not why I cannot follow 
 you, by the next train, perhaps you will understand 
 without my being forced to explain. I take the 
 only method left to me of justifying myself if it 
 is possible for me to do that in your eyes. 
 
 I dare not believe I dare not hope, that what 
 I have done can mean any more to you than pass- 
 ing embarrassment to a friendship whose value 
 and permanence shall not be disturbed by my 
 weakness if I can help it. 
 
 I love you. I ought not to have told you so. 
 I did not mean to tell you so. 
 
 But I love you ! A man situated as I am has 
 no right to declare his feeling for a woman like 
 yourself. This wrong have I done not to you; 
 I do not presume to dream that I could thereby 
 
280 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 in any way wrong you but to myself, and to 
 my love for you. It was my sacred secret ; it 
 is now your absolute possession. Do with it 
 and with me as you will. 
 
 EMANUEL BAYARD. 
 
 He dispatched this note by the first mail to 
 Campo Bello, and waited in such patience as he 
 could command for such answer as she chose 
 to make him. He waited a miserable time. At 
 the end of that week came a letter in her strong, 
 clear hand. He shut himself into his rooms, 
 turned the key, and read : 
 
 MY DEAR MR. BAYARD: I am not quite sure 
 that I entirely understand you. But I believe in 
 you, altogether ; and what I do not understand, 
 I am proud to take on trust. 
 
 The love of a man like yourself would be a 
 tribute to any woman. I shall count it the honor 
 of my life that you have given it to me. And I 
 shall be, because of it, all the more and always, 
 Your loyal friend, 
 
 HELEN CARRUTH. 
 
 This composed and womanly reply did not 
 serve to quell the agitation in which Bayard had 
 awaited it. He read and re-read, studied and 
 scrutinized the few self-contained words with a 
 sense of helplessness which equaled his misery. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 281 
 
 His position seemed to him intolerable. Some- 
 thing undignified about it cut the proud fellow to 
 the quick. He had thought himself prepared for 
 any natural phase in the lot which he had elected. 
 In the old language which the devotees of ages 
 have instinctively used, and which to each solitary 
 heart seems a figure of speech as new as its own 
 anguish, Bayard had believed himself able to 
 "bear his cross." He had now to learn that, 
 in the curious, complex interplay of human life, a 
 man may not be able even to wear his burden 
 alone, and drop decently under it when the time 
 comes. Suppose, as the cross-bearer crawls along 
 in blood and dust, that the arm of the coarse 
 wood strikes and bruises the delicate flesh of a 
 woman's shoulder? 
 
 Suppose oh, suppose the unsupposable, the 
 maddening ! 
 
 Suppose she might have been led, taught by his 
 great love to love him ? What then ? 
 
 Because a man had a duty to God, had he 
 none to a woman ? 
 
 After a night of sleepless misery, he wrote 
 again : 
 
 Is there no way in which I can see you if 
 only for a moment ? Shall you be in Boston 
 if you are not coming to Windover on your 
 return home ? This is more than I can bear. 
 Yours utterly, 
 
 E. B. 
 
282 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 And Helen answered : 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND : Mother wrote me yester- 
 day that she needed my help in packing. We go 
 back to Cesarea on the 9th, and I shall therefore 
 be in Windover for the twenty-four hours preced- 
 ing our start. . . . Do not suffer so ! I told you 
 that I trusted you. And I always shall. 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 H. C. 
 
 It was a chilly September evening. The early 
 dark of the coming autumn leaned from a clouded 
 sky. The goldenrod and asters on the side of the 
 avenue looked dim under the glimmer of the hotel 
 lights ; and the scarlet petals of the geraniums in 
 the flower-beds were falling. In the harbor the 
 anchored fleets flung out their headlights above 
 a tossing sea. There was no rowing. The floats 
 were deserted. 
 
 The guests, few now, and elect, of the sort, that 
 know and love the September Windover, clustered 
 around the fireplace in the big parlor of the Main- 
 sail. On the piazza of the Flying Jib the trunks 
 stood strapped for the late evening porter and 
 the early morning train. Bayard heard Helen's 
 voice in the rooms overhead, while he sat, with 
 whirling brain, making such adieus as he could 
 master to Professor and Mrs. Carruth. He thought 
 that the Professor looked at him with unwonted 
 keenness; he might have called it sternness, if 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 283 
 
 he had given himself time to reflect upon it. Re- 
 flect he did not, would not. He asked distinctly 
 for Miss Helen. Her mother went to call her, 
 and did not return. Professor Carruth lingered 
 a few moments, and excused himself. The proofs 
 of the article on the Unforgiven had come by the 
 evening mail; he had six galleys to correct that 
 night. He shook hands with Bayard somewhat 
 abstractedly, and went over to the clam study, 
 swinging a lantern on his thin arm to light the 
 meadow path. 
 
 " It is too cold for Father over there, to-night," 
 said Helen immediately, when she and Bayard 
 were left alone. " I don't think he ought to go. 
 The Unforgiven are always up to some mischief. 
 I would accept the doctrine of eternal punish- 
 ment to get rid of them. I 'm glad they 've got 
 as far along towards it as proof-sheets." 
 
 "Am I keeping your father out of this warm 
 room ? " asked Bayard with his quick perception. 
 He glanced at the open fire on the hearth. 
 " That won't do ! " he said decidedly, rising. 
 
 " Oh, I did n't mean that ! " cried Helen, 
 flushing. 
 
 14 It is true, all the same, whether you meant 
 it or not," returned Bayard. " I shall stay but 
 a few moments. Would you mind putting on 
 something warm, and walking with me for a 
 little ? We can go over to the clam study and get 
 him." 
 
 " Very well," said Helen somewhat distantly. 
 
284 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 She wore a summer traveling-dress of purple 
 serge, fastened at the throat with a gold pansy. 
 A long, thick cape with a hood lay upon the 
 sofa. 
 
 "Mother's waterproof will do," she said. She 
 wrapped it quickly around her, and they started 
 out. Something in the utter absence of vanity 
 which led a girl at such a moment to wear the 
 most unbecoming thing that she could put hands 
 on, roused a keen throb of admiration in Bayard. 
 Then he remembered, with a pang, the anomaly 
 of the situation. Why should she wish to make 
 herself beautiful to him ? What had he done 
 great heavens ! what could he do, to deserve or to 
 justify the innocent coquetries of a beloved and 
 loving woman ? 
 
 Helen pulled the hood of the cloak far over her 
 head. And yet, what a look she had ! The 
 severity and simplicity of her appearance added 
 to the gravity of her face a charm which he had 
 never seen before. How womanly, how strong, 
 how rich and ripe a being ! He drew her hand 
 through his arm authoritatively. She did not 
 resent this trifling act of mastery. His fingers 
 trembled ; his arm shook as she leaned upon it. 
 They struck out upon the meadow path in the 
 dark, and, for a moment, neither spoke. Then 
 he said : 
 
 " I have something to say to you. I shall wait 
 till we have sent the Professor back." 
 
 "That will be better," said Helen, not without 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 285 
 
 embarrassment. They came to the clam study, 
 and he waited outside while she said : 
 
 "Come, Papa! Put the Unforgiven in your 
 pocket, and go back to the fire ! Mr. Bayard and 
 I are going to walk." 
 
 The Professor meekly obeyed, and Helen locked 
 the door of the fish-house, and put the key in her 
 pocket. 
 
 " I shall give it to Mr. Salt to-night," she said. 
 " We start at 7.20. Pepper is going to take us 
 over." 
 
 These trivial words staggered Bayard's self- 
 control. 
 
 " You always leave so early ! " he stam- 
 mered. 
 
 " Does that make it any worse ? " she asked, 
 trying to smite. It was not a very successful smile, 
 and Bayard saw it. They were approaching the 
 electric arc that lighted the entrance to the beach. 
 The cold, light lay white on her face. Its expres- 
 sion startled him. 
 
 " Everything makes it worse ! " he groaned. 
 " It is as bad as it can be ! " 
 
 " I can see how it might have been worse," said 
 Helen. 
 
 "That's more than I can do. What do you 
 mean?" 
 
 " I would rather not tell you," replied Helen 
 with gentle dignity. 
 
 " Tell me what you mean ! " 
 
 He turned about and lifted her averted face ; he 
 
286 A SINGULAR LIFE, 
 
 touched her with the tip of one trembling finger 
 under the chin. 
 
 " I prefer not to tell you, Mr. Bayard." 
 
 She did not flush, nor blush. Her eyes met his 
 steadily. Something in them sent the mad color 
 racing across his face. 
 
 " Forgive me! I have no right to insist I 
 forgot I have none to anything. I have no 
 right to hear to see anything. God have 
 mercy upon me ! " 
 
 He put out his shaking hand, and gently covered 
 with it her uplifted eyes; veiling from his own 
 gaze the most sacred sight on earth. It was a 
 beautiful act, and so delicately done that Helen 
 felt as if a spirit had touched her. 
 
 But when she came to herself, and gave him her 
 eyes again, with their accustomed, calm, feminine 
 disguise, she saw no spirit, but the passionate face 
 of a man who loved her and despaired of her as 
 she had seen no man love or despair before. 
 
 "I cannot even ask for the chance to try" he 
 cried. " I am as much shut out as a beggar in the 
 street. I ought to be as dumb before you as the 
 thousand-years' dead ! And yet, God help me I 
 am a live man and I love you. I have no right to 
 seek a right I wrong you and myself by every 
 word I say, by every moment I spend in your pre- 
 sence. Good-by ! " he said with cruel abruptness, 
 holding out his hand. 
 
 Helen did not take it. She turned her back to 
 the great arc, and looked out to sea. Her figure. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE, 287 
 
 in its hooded cloak, stood strongly against the cold, 
 white light. The tide rose upon the deserted beach 
 insistently. The breakers roared on the distant 
 shore. 
 
 "You must see you must understand/ 5 he 
 groaned. " I arn a poor man poorer than you ever 
 took the trouble to think. A heretic, unpopular, 
 out of the world, an obscure, struggling fellow, 
 slighted, forgotten no friends but a handful of 
 fishermen and drunkards and living on what 
 do you suppose my salary is ? " 
 
 "It never occurred to me to suppose," said 
 Helen, lifting her head proudly, 
 
 " Five hundred dollars a year ; to be collected if 
 possible, to be dispensed with if necessary." 
 
 He jerked the words out bitterly. His fancy, 
 with terrible distinctness, took forbidden photo- 
 graphs by flashlight. He saw this daughter of 
 conventional Cesarea, this child of ease and indul- 
 gence, living at Mrs. Granite's, boarding on prunes 
 and green tea. He saw her trying to shake down 
 the coal fire on a January day, while he was out 
 making parish calls ; sitting in the bony rocking- 
 chair with the turkey-red cushion, beside the 
 screen where the paper Cupid forever tasted un- 
 eaten fruit. He saw the severe Saint Michael 
 looking down from the wall on that young, warm 
 woman-creature. He saw her sweep across the old, 
 darned carpet in her purple robes, with gold at her 
 throat and wrists. He saw her lift her soft arms. 
 He saw Now he put his hands before his own 
 eyes. 
 
288 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Oh, do not suffer so ! " said Helen, in a falter- 
 ing voice, "Do not, do not mind it so much! 
 It it breaks my heart ! " 
 
 These timid, womanly words recalled Bayard to 
 himself. 
 
 " Before I break your heart," he cried, " 1 ought 
 to be sawn asunder ! 
 
 "... Let us talk of this a little," he said in a 
 changed tone. " Just a word. You must see 
 you must understand my position. What another 
 man would say, in my place, I cannot say to any 
 woman. What I would die for the right to ask, I 
 may not ask." 
 
 " I understand," said Helen almost inaudibly. 
 
 She still stood with her back to the light, and 
 her face to the sea. 
 
 " I love you ! I love you ! " he repeated. " It is 
 because I love you Oh, do you see ? Can you 
 see?" 
 
 Helen made no reply. Was it possible that 
 she dared not trust herself, at that moment, to 
 articulate? Her silence seemed to the tortured 
 man more cruel than the bitterest word which ever 
 fell from the lip of a proud and injured woman. 
 
 Now again the camera of his whirling brain 
 took instantaneous negatives. He saw himself 
 doing what other men had done before him : aban- 
 doning a doubtful experiment of the conscience to 
 win a woman's love. He saw himself chopping 
 the treadmill of his unpopular, unsuccessful work 
 to chips; a few strong blows would do it; the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 289 
 
 discouraged people would merge themselves in the 
 respectable churches ; the ripples that he had 
 raised in the fishing-town would close over, and 
 his submerged work would sink to the bottom and 
 leave no sign. A few reformed drunkards would 
 go on a spree ; a few fishermen would feel neglected 
 for awhile : the scarlet and white fires of the Church 
 of the Love of Christ would go out on Angel 
 Alley. In a year Windover would be what Wind- 
 over was. . The eye of the great Christ would 
 gaze no more upon him through the veil of coarse 
 gauze ', while he free a new man with life 
 before him, like other men, and the right to love 
 like any other man 
 
 " That" he said solemnly, as if he had spoken 
 aloud, " is impossible. There could be only that 
 one way, I cannot take it." 
 
 "No," she said, lifting her head, as if he had 
 explained it all to her ; " no. You could never 
 do that. I would not have you do that for for 
 all that could happen for " she faltered. 
 
 " Great God ! " thought Bayartf, " and I cannot 
 even ask her how much she cares if she could 
 ever learn or try to love me." 
 
 He felt suddenly a strange weakness. He leaned 
 against a boulder for support, coughing painfully c 
 It seemed to him as if he were inwardly bleeding 
 to death. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Helen, turning about swiftly and 
 showing her own white face. " You are not well 
 ' you suffer. This will not must not I can- 
 
290 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 not bear it ! " she said bravely, but with a quivering 
 lip. " Give me your arm, Mr. Bayard, and let us 
 get home." 
 
 He obeyed her in silence. He felt, in truth, too 
 spent to speak. They got back to the door of the 
 cottage, and Helen led him in. Her father was 
 not in the parlor, and her mother had gone to bed, 
 The fire had fallen to embers. Helen motioned 
 him to an easy-chair, and knelt, coaxing the blaze, 
 and throwing on pine wood to start it. She looked 
 so womanly, so gentle, so home-like, and love-like, 
 on her knees in the firelight there, caring for the 
 comfort of the exhausted man, that the sight 
 was more than he could bear. He covered his 
 eyes. 
 
 " The fire flares so, coming in from the dark," 
 he said. 
 
 She stepped softly about, and brought him wine 
 and crackers, but he shook his head. 
 
 " My little tea-urn is packed," she said, smiling, 
 trying to look as if nothing had happened, " I 
 would have made, you such a cup of tea as you 
 never tasted ! " 
 
 "Spare me!" he pleaded, " Don't you suppose 
 I know that ? " 
 
 He rose manfully, as soon as he could. She 
 stood in the firelight, looking up. A quiver passed 
 over her delicate chin. He held out his hand, 
 She put her strong, warm clasp within it. 
 
 " I told you that I trusted you," she said dis- 
 tinctly. " Believe me, and go in peace." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 291 
 
 t 
 " I don't know another woman in the world who 
 
 ! " cried Bayard. 
 
 " Then let me be that only one," she answered. 
 " I am proud to be." 
 
 He could not reply. They stood with clasped 
 hands. Their eyes did not embrace, but comrade i 
 ship entered them. 
 
 " You will let me write ? " he pleaded, at last. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And see you sometimes." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And trust me in spite of all ? " 
 
 " I have said it." 
 
 " My blessing is n't worth much," he said 
 brokenly, " but for what it is Oh, my Love, 
 God go with you ! " 
 
 " And stay with you ! " she whispered. 
 
 He laid her hand gently down, and turned 
 away. She heard him shut the door, and walk 
 feebly, coughing, up the avenue. He looked back, 
 once. He saw her standing between the lace cur- 
 tains with her arms upraised, and her hand above 
 her eyes, steadily looking out into the dark. 
 
XX. 
 
 So Ernanuel Bayard entered into his Wilderness. 
 Therein he was tempted like other men of God who 
 renounce the greatest joy of life for its grandest 
 duty. There he thirsted and hungered, and put 
 forth no hand towards the meat or drink of human 
 comfort ; there he contended with himself, and hid 
 his face, for he went into solitary places, and prayed 
 apart, asking for that second strength which sus- 
 tains a man in the keeping of the vow that he has 
 not feared to take upon his soul not knowing, till 
 God teaches him, how easy it is to recognize, and 
 how hard to hold, " the highest when we see it." 
 
 Winter drew its yoke of ice about the shrinking 
 shoulders of the Cape ; the fleets huddled in the 
 harbor ; the fishermen drowned on the Grand 
 Banks ; Windover shivered and shriveled, and 
 looked with wincing, winking eyes upon the blind- 
 ing horizon of the winter sea ; the breakers broke 
 in white fire upon the bar; Angel Alley drank 
 and cursed to keep warm; and the young 
 preacher's delicate face, patiently passing in and 
 out beneath the white and scarlet lights of the 
 chapel of Christlove, gathered a snowdrift of its 
 own with the whitening of the year. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 293 
 
 His work, like most service sustained in conse- 
 cration and in common sense by one pure and 
 strong personality, grew upon his hands ; not 
 steadily, but by means of much apparent failure. 
 
 The fame of the heretic missionary had gone 
 abroad as such things do. It was no uncommon 
 thing for members of the strictest sect of the Or- 
 thodox churches to stand half curious, half defer- 
 ent, and wholly perplexed by what they saw and 
 heard, and calculating the prospects of an experi- 
 ment which the observer was, as a rule, too wise a 
 man or too good a woman not to respect. 
 
 It even happened now and then that some dis- 
 tinguished clergyman was seen jammed between a 
 fisherman and a drunkard in the crush by the door ; 
 taking notes of the sermon, studying the man and 
 his methods with the humility characteristic of 
 large men, and seldom imitated by little ones. 
 
 The Reverend George Fenton was not, but would 
 have liked to be, one of these eminent and docile 
 clerical visitors at the chapel of Christlove. He 
 dared not leave his congregation, decorously scat- 
 tered to listen to a sound theology, in the pews of 
 the old First Church, to elbow his unnoticed way 
 among the publicans and sinners who thronged 
 his classmate's mission ; but he often wished he 
 could. He asked himself anxiously : " What is 
 the secret ? How does the man do it ? " Some- 
 times he envied his heretic friend the drunkards, 
 and sailors, the reckless girls, and most of all 
 the fishermen, sacred in the canon and to the ima- 
 
294 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 gination of the church, the fishermen, once the 
 chosen friends of Our Lord. 
 
 Bayard even fancied that Fenton looked at him 
 a little wistfully; and that he spoke with him 
 oftener and lingered longer when they met upon 
 the streets of the sad and tempted town whose re- 
 demption both men, each in his own way, desired 
 and sought, with a sincerity which this biography 
 would not intimate was to be found only in the 
 heart of its subject, and hero. For the Reverend 
 George Fenton was no hypocrite, or Pharisee ; the 
 prevailing qualities of his class not being of this 
 sort. No one rated him more generously than his 
 heretic classmate ; or looked more gently upon the 
 respectable, dreary effort to save the world by an 
 outgrown method, which the conformer dutifully 
 and comfortably sustained. 
 
 " I heard a Boston man call you the Father 
 Taylor of Windover," one day abruptly said the 
 clergyman to the missionary, upon the post-office 
 steps. " Boston could no farther go, I take it, I 
 hear your audience has outgrown your mission- 
 room. That must be a great encouragement ; yon 
 must consider it a divine leading," added Fenton, 
 with the touch of professional slang and jealousy 
 not unnatural to better men than he. " But you 
 must remember that we, too, are following the 
 Master in our way ; it 's a pretty old and useful 
 way." 
 
 Then up spoke Captain Hap, who stood at Bay- 
 ard's elbow. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 295 
 
 " It 's jest about here, Mr. Fenton. You folks 
 set out to f oiler Him ; but our minister, he lives 
 like Him. There's an almig-hty difference." 
 
 Another day, Fenton, with his young wife on 
 his arm, came down Angel Alley with the air of 
 a tourist inspecting the points of interest in a new 
 vicinity. 
 
 " Bayard ! " he exclaimed ; " you look as white 
 as a Cesarea snowdrift. You are overworked, 
 man. What can I do, to help you ? If there 
 is anything," he added with genuine concern, 
 " you 'd let me know, would n't you ? " 
 
 " Probably not, Fenton," replied Bayard, smil- 
 ing. 
 
 " I mean it," urged the other, flushing. 
 
 "If you do, the time may come," said Bayard 
 dreamily. 
 
 He glanced at his old friend, the rosy, well- 
 fed man ; at the round face destitute of the carving 
 of great purpose or deep anxiety ; at the pretty 
 girl with the Berkshire eyes who looked adoringly 
 over the sleek elbow to which she clung. These 
 two well-meaning, commonplace people seemed 
 ennobled and beautified, as commoner far than 
 they may be, by their human love and happiness. 
 Bayard, in his shabby clothes, with his lonely face, 
 watched them with a certain reverence. 
 
 He thought but when did he not think of 
 Helen? 
 
 He wrote ; she answered ; they did not meet ; 
 he worked on patiently ; and the winter went. 
 
296 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Bayard drowned himself in his work with the new 
 and conscious ardor of supreme renunciation. He 
 thought of the woman whom he loved, as the diver 
 at the bottom of the sea, when the pumps refuse to 
 work, thinks of sky and shore and sun, of air 
 and breath. 
 
 One bleak, bright February night, Bayard came 
 out from his mission, and looked about Angel 
 Alley anxiously. 
 
 Bob was within, and Tony and Jean were safe ; 
 Job Slip was sober, and Tom, Dick, and Harry 
 were accounted for. But Lena Lena had not 
 been seen at Christlove for now many weeks. 
 
 The waywardness of the girl had long been sore 
 at Bayard's heart, and the step which he took that 
 night was the result of thought and deliberate pur- 
 pose. Afterwards he was glad to remember that 
 he had acted on no one of those mere sentiments 
 or impulsive whims which are the pitfalls of a 
 philanthropic life. 
 
 The hour was not early, decent people were 
 scattering to their homes, and Windover was giv- 
 ing herself over to the creatures of the night. It 
 was a windy night, and the snow blew in cold, 
 white powder from the surface of drifts called 
 heavy for the coast, and considered a sign of " a 
 spell of weather." 
 
 There was a full moon ; and the harbor, as one 
 looked down between the streets, showed in glints 
 and glimpses, bright and uneasy. The bellow of 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 297 
 
 the whistling-buoy nine miles out, off the coast, 
 was audible at firesides. The wind sped straight 
 from Cape Cod, and was as icy as death. 
 
 It was one of the nights when the women of 
 Windover grow silent, and stand at the window 
 with the shade raised, looking out between their 
 hands, with anxious, seaward eyes. " God pity the 
 men at sea ! " they say who have no men at sea,, 
 But those who have say nothing. They pray. As 
 the night wears on, and the gale increases, they 
 weep. They do not sleep. The red light on 
 the Point goes out, and dawn is gray. The buoy 
 shrieks on malignantly. It " comes on thick " ; 
 and the fog-bell begins to toll. Its mighty lips 
 utter the knell f6r all the unburied drowned that 
 are, and have been, and are yet to be. Windover 
 listens and shudders. It is one of the nights when 
 the sheltered and the happy and the clean of life 
 bless God for home, for peace, for fire and pillow. 
 It is one of the nights when the soul of the gale 
 enters into the soul of the tempted and the unbe- 
 friended, and with it seven devils worse than the 
 first. It was one of the nights when girls like 
 Lena are too easy or too hard to find. 
 
 Bayard sought her everywhere. She was not to 
 be seen in Angel Alley, and he systematically and 
 patiently searched the town. With coat-collar 
 turned up, and hat turned down, he tried to keep 
 warm, but the night was deadly bleak. It came 
 on to be eleven o'clock ; half past ; and mid- 
 night approached. He was about to abandon his 
 
298 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 quest when he struck a trace of her, and with 
 redoubled patience he hunted it down. He had 
 taken no one with him in his search for Lena ; in 
 truth, he knew of no person in all that Christian 
 town who would have wished to share that night's 
 repulsive errand if he had asked it. He recog- 
 nized this fact with that utter absence of bitter- 
 ness which is the final grace and test of dedication 
 to an unselfish end. 
 
 " Why should I expect it ? " he thought gently. 
 " Duty is not subject to a common denominator. 
 This is mine and not another's." 
 
 A policeman gave him, at last, the clew he 
 needed ; and Bayard, who had returned on his 
 track to Angel Alley, halted before the door of 
 a house at the end of a dark court, within a shell' s- 
 throw of the wharves. His duty had never led 
 him before into precisely such a place, and his 
 soul sickened within him. He hesitated, with his 
 foot on the steps. 
 
 " Better stay outside, sir," suggested the police- 
 man. 
 
 Bayard shook his head. 
 
 " Shan't I go with you, sir ? You don't know 
 what you 're about. Better have an officer along." 
 
 " Stay here, within call, will you ? " answered 
 Bayard. "That will do. The law can't do my 
 errand." 
 
 "Nor nothin' else in this town but that" re- 
 turned the officer, touching his helmet. 
 
 He pointed up the Alley where the large letters 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 299 
 
 of the solemn white and scarlet sign blazed all night 
 before the chapel of Christlove. The fishermen 
 could see it from their schooners' decks as they 
 dropped anchors; and it shone strangely in their 
 weather-beaten faces as they pushed past or sank 
 into the doors of the dens that lined the street 
 
 Bayard's eye followed the officer's finger, light- 
 ing with that solemn radiance peculiar to himself; 
 and with this illumination on his face he entered 
 the place whose ways take hold on death. 
 
 The officer waited without. In an incredibly 
 short time the minister reappeared. He was not 
 alone. Lena followed him with hanging head. 
 
 "Thank you, Sergeant," said Bayard quietly, 
 touching his hat, " I shall need you no longer." 
 
 He turned, witl? the girl beside him, and crossed 
 the Alley. The officer, with a low whistle, lingered 
 a moment, and watched the astounding pair. In 
 the full moonlight, in the sight of all whom it did 
 or did not concern, Bayard walked up and down 
 the street with Lena. It was now near to the 
 stroke of midnight. The two could be seen con- 
 versing earnestly. Lena did not raise her eyes. 
 The minister watched her eagerly. They paced 
 up and down. Men staggering home from their 
 sprees stood stupidly and stared at the two. Old 
 Trawl came to his door and saw them, and called 
 Ben, who looked, and swore the mighty oath of 
 utter intellectual confusion. The minister nodded 
 to Ben, and spoke once or twice to some sailor who 
 awaited salutation ; but he suffered no interruption 
 
300 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 of his interview with the girl. In the broad moon 
 light he continued quietly to walk up and down 
 Angel Alley, with the street-girl at his side. 
 
 " Lena," Bayard had begun, " I have been try- 
 ing to help the people in this Alley for almost a 
 year and a half, and I have met with nothing to 
 discourage me as much as you do. Some men and 
 women have grown better, and some have not 
 changed at all. You are growing worse." 
 
 " That 's so," assented Lena. " It 's as true as 
 Hell." 
 
 " I begin to think," replied the minister, " that 
 it must be partly my fault. It seems to me as if 
 I must have failed, somehow, or made some mis- 
 take or you would be a better girl, after all this 
 time. Do you think of anything Come, Lena ! 
 Give your best attention to the subject - Do 
 you think of anything that I could do, which I 
 have not done, to induce you to be a decent 
 woman ? " 
 
 " I tried, for you ! " muttered Lena. " I tried ; 
 you know I did I " 
 
 " Yes, I know you did ; and I appreciated it. 
 You failed, that was all. You are discouraged, 
 and so am I. Now, tell me ! What else can I 
 do, to make a good girl of you ? For it 's got to be 
 done, you see," he added firmly. " I can't have 
 this any longer. You disgrace the chapel, and 
 the people, and me. It makes me unhappy, Lena." 
 
 " Mr. Bayard ! Mr. Bayard ! " said Lena with 
 trembling lip, " I '11 go drown in the outer harbor. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 301 
 
 I ain't fit to live ... if you care. I didn't 
 suppose you cared." 
 
 " You are not fit to die, Lena," returned Bayard 
 gently. " And I do care. I have always thought 
 you were born to be a fine woman. There 's some- 
 thing I like about you. You are generous, and 
 brave, and kind-hearted. Then see what a voice 
 you have ! You might have been a singer, Lena, 
 and sung noble things the music that makes 
 people purer and better. You might have "... 
 
 " Oh, my God ! " cried Lena ; " I was singin' in 
 that in there to-night. They 're always after 
 me to sing 'em into damnation." 
 
 " Lena," said Bayard in a thrilling tone, " look 
 into my face ! " 
 
 She obeyed him. High above her short stature 
 Bayard's delicate countenance looked down at the 
 girl. All the loathing, all the horror, all the 
 repulsion that was in him for the sin he suffered 
 the sinner to see for the first time. His tender 
 face darkened and quivered, shrinking like some 
 live thing that she tormented. 
 
 u Oh," wailed Lena, u am I like that to you? 
 Is it as bad as that ? " 
 
 " It is as bad as that," answered the minister 
 solemnly. 
 
 "Then I'll go drown," said Lena dully; "I 
 might as well." 
 
 " No," he said quietly. " You will not drown. 
 You will live, and make yourself a girl whom I 
 can respect." 
 
302 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Would you ever respect me respect ME, if 1 
 was to be if I was to do what you say ? " asked 
 Lena in a low, controlled tone. 
 
 " I should respect you from my soul," said Bay- 
 ard. 
 
 " Would you would you be willing to would 
 you feel ashamed to shake hands with me, Mr. 
 Bayard, if I was a different girl? " 
 
 " I will shake hands with you now," returned the 
 minister quietly, " if you will give me your word 
 of honor that you will never, from this hour " 
 
 " I will never, from this hour, so help me God ! " 
 said Lena solemnly. 
 
 " So help her, God ! " echoed Bayard. 
 
 He lifted his hand above her head, as if in 
 prayer and blessing ; then gently extended it. The 
 girl's cold, purple fingers shook as he touched 
 them. She held her bare hand up in the moon- 
 Ijght, as if to bathe it in whiteness. 
 
 " Mr. Bayard, sir," she said in her ordinary 
 voice, " it is a bargain." 
 
 Bayard winced, in spite of himself, at the words ; 
 but he looked at Lena's face, and when he saw its 
 expression he felt ashamed of his own recoil. 
 
 " Very well," he answered, adopting her business- 
 like tone, " so it is. Now, then, Lena ! What 
 next ? What are you going to do ? Have you 
 any home any friends anywhere to turn ? " 
 
 " I have no friend on all God's earth but you, 
 sir," said Lena drearily, " but I guess I '11 manage, 
 somehow. I can mostly do what I set out to." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 303 
 
 " Your mother ? " asked Bayard gently. 
 
 " She died when my baby was born, sir. She 
 died of the shame of it. I was fifteen year old. 5 ' 
 
 " Oh ! and the the man ? The father of 
 your child ? " 
 
 " He was a gentleman. He was a married man. 
 I worked for him, in a shop. He ain't dead. But 
 I 'd sooner go to hell than look to him." 
 
 " I 'd about as soon you would " the minister 
 said in his heart. But his lips answered only, 
 "You poor girl ! You poor, poor, miserable girl! " 
 
 Then, for the first time, Lena broke down, and 
 began to cry, there, on the streets, in the sight of 
 every one. 
 
 "I must find you work shelter home with 
 some lady. I will do whatever can be done. Rely 
 on me ! " cried Bayard helplessly. 
 
 He began to realize what he had done, in under- 
 taking Lena's " case " without the help of a woman. 
 Confusedly he ran over in his mind the names of 
 the Christian women whom he knew, to whom he 
 could turn in this emergency. He thought of Helen 
 Carruth ; but an image of the Professor's wife, her 
 mother, being asked to introduce Lena into the 
 domestic machinery of a Cesarea household, half 
 amused and half embittered him. He remembered 
 the wife of his church treasurer, a kindly woman, 
 trained now to doing the unexpected for Christ's 
 sake. 
 
 " I will speak to Mrs. Bond. I will consider 
 the matter. Perhaps there may be some position 
 
304 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 some form of household service," he ventured, 
 with the groping masculine idea that a domestic 
 career was the only one open to a girl like Lena. 
 
 Then Lena laughed. 
 
 " Thank you, sir. But I ain't no more fit for 
 housework than I be for a jeweler's trade, or floss 
 embroidery, or a front pew in Heaven. There 
 ain't a lady in Christendom would put up with 
 me. I wouldn't like it, either," said Lena can- 
 didly. " There 's only one thing I would like. 
 It 's just come over me, standin' here. I guess I '11 
 manage." 
 
 " I shall wish to know," observed Bayard anx- 
 iously, " what you are going to do, and where you 
 will be." 
 
 " I '11 take a room I know of," said Lena. " It 
 ain't in Angel Alley. It 's a decent place. I '11 
 get Johnny's mother to come along o' me. She 's 
 dead sick of the Widders' Home. She 's kinder 
 fond of me, Johnny's mother is, and she can take 
 in or go out, to help a bit. Then I '11 go over to 
 the powder factory." 
 
 "The powder factory?" echoed the puzzled 
 pastor. 
 
 "The gunpowder factory, over to the Cut," 
 said Lena. " They 're kinder short of hands. 
 It ain't a popular business. The pay 's good, and 
 Lord, / should n't care ! The sooner I blow up, 
 the safer I '11 be. I guess I 'd like it, too. I 
 always thought I should." 
 
 "Very well," said the minister helplessly. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 305 
 
 "That may answer, till we can find something 
 better." 
 
 It was now past twelve o'clock, and the night 
 was growing bitterly cold. Bayard said good-night 
 to Lena, and they separated opposite Trawl's 
 ioor. 
 
 He went shivering home, and stirred up his fire. 
 He was cold to the heart. That discreet after- 
 thought which is the enemy of too many of our 
 noble decisions, tormented him. He turned to his 
 books, and taking one which was lying open upon 
 the study-table read: 
 
 " He spoke much about the wrongs of women ; 
 and it is very touching to know that during the 
 last year of his life he frequently went forth at 
 night, and endeavored to redeem the fallen women 
 of Brighton." . . . 
 
 It was not three days from this time that Captain 
 Hap approached the minister on the Alley, with 
 a sober and anxious face. He held in his hand 
 a copy of the " Windover Topsail." His rough 
 finger trembled as it pressed the paragraph which 
 he handed in silence for Bayard to read : 
 
 " We regret to learn that a certain prominent 
 citizen of this place who has been laboring among 
 the sailors and fishermen in a quasi-clerical capacity, 
 is so unfortunate as to find his name associated 
 with a most unpleasant scandal arising out of his 
 acquaintance with the disreputable women of the 
 district in which he labors. We wish the Rev- 
 erend gentleman well out of his scrape, but may 
 
306 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 take occasion to suggest that such self -elected cen- 
 sors of our society and institutions must learn 
 somehow that they cannot touch pitch and not be 
 defiled, any more than ordinary men who do not 
 make their pretensions to holiness." 
 
 "Well?" said Bayard, quietly returning the 
 paper. 
 
 Job Slip had joined them, and read the para- 
 graph over the Captain's shoulder. Job was white 
 to the lips with the virile rage of a man of the sea. 
 
 " I 've shipped here, and I 've coasted there, and 
 I 've sailed eenymost around the world," slowly 
 said Captain Hap. " I never in my life and I 'm 
 comin' on seventy-five year old I never knew 
 no town I would n't d'ruther see a scandal a-goin' 
 in, than this here. It 's Hell let loose on ye," 
 added the Captain grimly. 
 
 44 Find me the fellar that put up that job ! " 
 roared Job Slip, rolling up his sleeves. 
 
 " He ain't fur to seek," answered the Captain 
 with a short laugh. 
 
 "He's the devil and all his angels smithered 
 into one ! " raved Job. 
 
 44 That 's drawrin' of it mild," said Captain Hap. 
 
 44 This low matter does not trouble me," 
 observed Bayard, smiling with genuine and beauti- 
 ful remoteness. 
 
 44 Excuse me, sir," said Captain Hap ; " that 's 
 all you know 1 " 
 
XXi. 
 
 CAPTAIN HAP was wiser in his generation thac 
 the child of light. Before a week had gone by. 
 Bayard found himself the victim of one of the 
 cruelest forms of human persecution the scan- 
 dal of a provincial town. 
 
 Its full force fell suddenly upon him. 
 
 Now, this was the one thing for which he was 
 totally unprepared ; of every other kind of 
 martyrdom, it seemed to him, he had recognized 
 the possibility : this had never entered his mind. 
 
 He accepted it with that outward serenity which 
 means in a man of his temperament the costliest 
 expenditure of inward vitality, and, turning neither 
 to the right nor to the left, kept on his way. 
 
 Averted looks avoided him upon the streets. 
 Cold glances sought him in Angel Alley. Sus- 
 picion lurked in eyes that had always met him 
 cordially. Hands were withdrawn that had never 
 failed to meet his heartily. His ears quivered 
 with comments overheard as he passed through 
 groups upon the business streets. The more 
 public and the more respectable the place, the 
 worse his reception. He came quickly into the 
 habit of avoiding, when he could, the better por- 
 tions of the town. 
 
 Before he had time to determine on any given 
 
308 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 course of conduct, he felt himself hunted down 
 into Angel Alley, like other outcasts. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Fenton in this crisis did 
 what appealed to him as a praiseworthy deed. He 
 came down to the chapel, and, in the eyes of 
 Angel Alley sought his classmate boldly. Give 
 him the credit of the act ; it meant more than we 
 may readily distinguish. 
 
 Men who conform, who live like other men, 
 who think in the accustomed channels, are not to 
 be judged by the standard which we hold before 
 our heroes. He held out his hand to Bayard with 
 some unnecessary effusion. 
 
 " My dear fellow ! " he murmured, " this is really 
 you know I came to express my sympathy." 
 
 " Thank you, Fenton," said Bayard quietly. 
 
 He said nothing mere, and Fenton looked embar- 
 rassed. He had prepared himself at some length 
 to go into the subject. He felt that Bayard's 
 natural indiscretion needed the check which it had 
 probably now received, for life. But he found 
 himself unable to say anything of the kind. The 
 words shriveled on his tongue. His own eyes fell 
 before Bayard's high look. A spectator might 
 have thought their positions to be reversed ; that 
 the clergyman was the culprit, and the slandered 
 missionary the judge and patron. Fenton was un- 
 comfortable, and, after a few meaningless words, 
 he said good-morning, and turned away. 
 
 " Of course," he observed, as he went down the 
 long steps of the mission, "you will meet this 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 309 
 
 slander by some explanation, or change of tack? 
 You will adapt your course hereafter to the cir- 
 cumstances ? " 
 
 " I shall explain nothing, and change nothing,^ 
 answered Bayard calmly. " I should do the same 
 thing over again to-morrow, if I had it to do. I 
 have committed no imprudence, and I shall stoop 
 to no apology. I doubt if there are six civilized 
 places in this country where an honest man in my 
 position, doing my work, would have been sub- 
 jected to the consequences which have befallen a 
 simple deed of Christian mercy such as has been 
 done by scores of better men than I, before me. 
 Why, it has not even the merit or demerit 
 of originality ! I did not invent the salvation of 
 the Magdalene. Tha^ dates back about two thou- 
 sand years. It takes a pretty low mind to slander 
 a man for it." 
 
 This was the only bitter thing he was heard to 
 say. It may be pardoned him. It silenced the 
 Reverend Mr. Fenton, and he departed thought 
 fully from Angel Alley. 
 
 As Bayard looked back upon these lonely days, 
 when the fury of the storm which swept about his 
 ears had subsided, as such social tornadoes do, he 
 perceived that the thing from which he had 
 suffered most keenly was the disapproval of his 
 own people. Wrong him they did not, because 
 they could not. They might as easily have 
 smirched the name and memory of the beloved 
 disciple. But criticise him they did, poor souls/ 
 
310 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Windover gossip, the ultimatum of their narrow 
 lives, seemed to them to partake of the finalities 
 of death and the judgment. The treasurer of the 
 society was troubled. 
 
 " We must reef to the breeze ! we must reef to 
 the breeze ! " he repeated mournfully. " But, 
 my dear sir, you must allow me to say that I 
 think it would have been better seamanship to 
 have avoided it altogether." 
 
 " What would you have had me do, Mr. Bond ? " 
 asked Bayard, looking rather pale. " I am sorry 
 to disappoint you. The love and trust of my own 
 people is all I have," he faltered. 
 
 " Some witness, for instance," suggested Mr. 
 Bond. " To be sure, you did call on the police, I 
 am told." 
 
 "All Angel Alley "was my witness," returned 
 Bayard, recovering his self-possession. 
 
 " Some woman, then some lady ? " 
 
 " Name the woman. I thought of summoning 
 your wife. Should you have let her go on such 
 an errand, on such a night, at such an hour, and 
 under such conditions ? " 
 
 "I ought to have let her go," answered the 
 officer of the heretic church, honestly. " I 'm not 
 sure that I should." 
 
 He looked perplexed, but none the less 
 troubled for that, and sighed as he shook hands 
 with his pastor. Mrs. Bond took her husband's 
 arm, and walked away with him. " I would have 
 done it, John," she said. But she was crying; so 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 311 
 
 was Mrs. Granite. Jane's face was white and 
 scared. Captain Hap was very sober. Job Slip 
 was significantly silent. Rumor had it, that a 
 fight was brewing between Job and the Trawls. 
 Job's anger, if thoroughly aroused, was a serious 
 affair. Bayard felt the discomfort and annoyance 
 of his people acutely. He went away alone, and 
 walked up and down the winter coast, for miles and 
 hours, trying to regain himself in solitude and the 
 breath of the sea. For some time he found it 
 impossible to think coherently. A few words got 
 the ring of his mind, and shook it : 
 
 " From that time many of His disciples went 
 back, and walked no more with Him." 
 
 Usually in such a situation, some one trivial 
 occurrence fixes itself upon the sore imagination 
 of a man and galls him above all the really impor- 
 tant aspects of his misfortune. This trifle came 
 to Bayard in the reception of a letter from the 
 girl herself. 
 
 DEAR SIR, MR. BAYARD : My hart will brake 
 to think I cause you shame for savin of a poor girl. 
 I see that peece in the paper. It aint far to gess 
 who done it. If it wasnt for disgrasin you Ide 
 kill Ben Trawl tonite. I wouldnt mind hangin. 
 I know how Ide do it too. But dont you trubble 
 I wont shame you no more. I'll clare out all- 
 together. So good-bye and God bless you Sir. 
 
 This is from, Yours respictfully, LENA. 
 
312 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Bayard's reply to Lena's note was to go straight 
 to the gunpowder factory, and speak with the girl. 
 The superintendent stood by, and overheard him 
 say, in a commanding tone : 
 
 " Lena, you will not leave this town. You will 
 come to the chapel as usual. You will sing with 
 us next Sunday. You will pay no attention to 
 anything that you hear, or see. You will never 
 suffer yourself even to suppose that any base, low 
 mind or tongue can injure your pastor. You will 
 do as I bid you, and you will become the woman 
 you promised to. You will do this with my help 
 or without it. Anything may happen to a person. 
 Nothing can undo a promise." 
 
 " Mr. Bayard, sir," saidJLena, forcing back her 
 tears, for she was not a crying girl, " I 'm a girl 
 of my word, and I ain't goin' back on you. But 
 there's one thing I've got to say. Mebbe I 
 should n't have another chance, bein' things are as 
 they be. I did want to ask you, Mr. Bayard, sir 
 if I was to be a good girl long enough, as long 
 as you should set the time to make me fit, do 
 you suppose, Mr. Bayard, you would ever feel so 
 as if you could touch your hat to me same a& 
 you do to decent girls ? " 
 
 The superintendent of the powder factory 
 brushed his hand across his eyes. Bayard was 
 much moved. 
 
 The dark, little figure of the girl, in her work- 
 ing-clothes, standing stolidly at her post in the 
 most dangerous of the deadly trades, wherein no 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 313 
 
 " hand " can insure his life, blurred before the 
 minister. He thought how little life could mean 
 to Lena, at its kindest and best. 
 
 " When the time comes," he said gently, " I 
 shall lift my hat to you." 
 
 " That 's worth while," said Lena in her short, 
 forcible way. She turned and went back to her 
 work. 
 
 The factory seemed to throb with the struggle 
 of imprisoned death to burst its bars. Bayard 
 came out into the air with the long breath which 
 the bravest man always drew when he left the 
 buildings. 
 
 These incidents (which are events to the solitary, 
 missionary life) were but two days old when Joey 
 Slip climbed the minister's stairs, sobbing dolor- 
 ously. 
 
 Rumor was running in Windover that Job was 
 drunk again. Neither the child nor the wife could 
 say if truth were in it, for neither had seen the 
 man since yesterday. But Mari had dispatched 
 the boy to the minister with the miserable news. 
 With a smothered exclamation which Joey found 
 it impossible to translate, Bayard snatched the 
 child's hand, and set forth. His face wore a 
 terrible look. He reached the wharves in time to 
 come directly upon Job, the centre of a ring of 
 jeering roughs. Muddy, wet, torn, splashed with 
 slime from the docks, hatless and raving, Job was 
 doing his maudlin best to fight Ben Trawl T who 
 stood at a safe distance, smiling with the cynicism 
 
314 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 of a rumseller who never drinks. Job poor 
 Job, the "reformed man"; Job, who had fought 
 harder for his manhood than most sober men ever 
 fight for anything from the baby's crib to the 
 broadcloth casket ; Job, the " pillar " of Christ- 
 love mission, the pride and pet of the struggling 
 people ; Job, the one sure comfort of his pastor's 
 most discouraged hour, Job stood there, abased 
 and hideous. 
 
 He had lived one splendid year; he had done 
 one glorious thing ; he had achieved that for which 
 better men than he should take off their hats to 
 him. And there Bayard looked at him once, 
 and covered his face. 
 
 Job recognized him, and, frenzied as he was, 
 sunk upon his knees in the mud, and crawled 
 towards the minister, piteously holding up his 
 hands. One must have been in Job's place, or 
 in Bayard's, to understand what that moment was 
 to these two men. 
 
 In the paltry scenes of what we call the society 
 of the world, there are no actors who should criti- 
 cise, as there are few who can comprehend the 
 roles of this plain and common tragedy. 
 
 With the eyes of a condemning angel, Bayard 
 strode into the group, and took Job home. 
 
 " It 's clear D. T.," said Captain Hap between 
 his teeth. 
 
 Bayard sent for a doctor, who prescribed chloral, 
 and said the case was serious. Mari put on a clean 
 apron, and dusted up the rooms, and reinforced the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 315 
 
 minister, who proceeded to nurse Job for thirty-six 
 hours. Captain Hap went home. He said he 'd 
 rather tie a slipknot round the fellar's neck, and 
 drawr it taut. 
 
 But when Job came to himself, poor fellow, the 
 truth came with him. Job had been the blameless 
 victim of one of those incredible but authenticated 
 plots which lend blackness to the dark complexion 
 of the liquor trade. 
 
 Job was working ashore, it seemed, for a week, 
 being out of a chance to ship ; and he had been 
 upon the wharves, salting down fish, and came out 
 at hi? nooning, with the rest, for his lunch. There 
 was a well, in a yard, by the fish-flakes, and a dip- 
 per, chained, hung from the pump. 
 
 ib came Job's turn to drink from the dipper. 
 And when he had drunk, the devil entered into 
 him. For the rim of the dipper had been mali- 
 ciously smeared with rum. Into the parched body 
 of the " reformed man " the fire of that flavor ran, 
 as flame runs through stubble in a drought. 
 
 The half-cured drunkard remembered putting 
 down his head, and starting for the nearest grog- 
 shop on a run, with a yell. From that moment 
 till Bayard found him, Job remembered nothing 
 more. Such episodes of the nether world are 
 Dt rare enough to be doubted, and this one is no 
 
 " t 'm in for it, now," groaned Job. " Might as 
 well go to h - and done with it." 
 
 Then Bayard, haggard from watching, turned 
 
316 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 and looked on Job. Job put his hands before his 
 face. 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " he cried. " But you see, there ain't 
 a wharf-rat left in Windover as Vd trust me now ! " 
 
 " Take my hand, Job," said the minister slowly. 
 
 Job took it, sobbing like a baby. 
 
 " Now climb up again, Job ! " said Bayard in a 
 strong voice. " I 'm with you ! " 
 
 Thus went the words of the shortest sermon of 
 the minister's life. To the end of his days, Job 
 Slip will think it was the greatest and the best. 
 
 Captain Hap, penitent, but with no idea of say- 
 ing so, came up the tenement stairs. Mari and 
 Joey sat beside the fire. Mari was frying chunks 
 of haddock for supper. Joey was singing in a 
 contented little voice something that he had 
 caught in the mission : 
 
 " Veresawidenessin Godsmer cy 
 
 Likevewidenessof vesea. . . . 
 ForveloveofGod is bwoard er 
 
 Vanvemeazzerof mansmine 
 Anve heartof veE ter rial 
 
 Ismoswonderfully kine." 
 
 " Hear the boy ! " cried Mari, laughing for the 
 first time for many black days. 
 
 " What in the world is he singin' ? " asked 
 Joey's father. 
 
 "Why, I'm sure it's as plain as can be," said 
 Joey's mother, 
 
 " * There 's a wideness in God's mercy, 
 Like the wideness of the sea.' 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 317 
 
 Then he says : 
 
 " ' For the love of God is broader 
 
 Than the measure of man's mind, 
 And the heart of the Eternal 
 Is most wonderful and kind.' 
 
 Oh, ain't he the clever boy ? " 
 
 " We '11 see," said Job unexpectedly, putting his 
 feet to the floor. "I ain't a-goin' to have the 
 little fellar ashamed of his father, see if I be ! " 
 
 " All the same," observed Captain Hap dryly v 
 " I would n't go on the street to-night, if I was you. 
 I '11 stay along of you a spell. The minister 's beat 
 out. There 's enough goin' on yet to capsize a 
 soberer man than you be, Job. The fellar that 
 did this here ain't a-goin' to stop at rims of dippers. 
 No, sir ! ... Job Slip ! Don't you tech nothin' ; 
 not noihiri outside of your own house, this six 
 month to come ! Not a soda, Job ! Not a tunv 
 bier o' milk ! Not a cup o' coffee ! Not a swaller o' 
 water ! No, nor a bite of victuals. You '11 be 
 hunted down like a rat. There 9 s bread buttered 
 with phosphorus layin' round loose for ye most any- 
 wheres. Everybody knows who done this. 'T ain't 
 no use to spile good English callin' bad names. 
 He won't stop at nothin' partikkelar to drawr you 
 under." 
 
 " But why ? " asked Bayard. " Why should he 
 hound down poor Job so ? " 
 
 " To spite you, sir," replied the captain without 
 hesitation. 
 
518 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 In the dead silence which followed the captain's 
 words, Joey's little voice piped up again : 
 
 " Be hushed my dark spew it 
 Ve wussvatcancome 
 But shortens vy zhour nee 
 Anhastingsme home." 
 
 Joey stole up merrily, and patted out the tune with 
 his little fingers on the minister's pale cheek. 
 " He says," began Mari proudly, 
 
 " * Be hushed, my dark spirit, 
 The worst that can come ' " 
 
 But Captain Hap, who was not in a pious mood, 
 interrupted the maternal translation. 
 
 " Folks say that they 've got into their 
 
 heads their license is in genooine danger. Confine 
 yourself to prayin' an' singin', an' they don't deny 
 that's what you're hired for. Folks say if you 
 meddle with city politics, there ain't an insurance 
 company in New England 'u'd take a policy on 
 your life, sir. You might as well hear what's 
 goin' on, Mr. Bayard. I don't suspicion it '11 
 make no odds to you. I told 'em you would n't 
 tech the politics of this here town with a forty- 
 fathom grapplin'-iron, no, nor with a harbor- 
 dredger ! " 
 
 " You 're right there, Captain," returned Bayard, 
 Smiling. 
 
 " Then 't ain't true about the license ? " asked 
 the captain anxiously. 
 
 "I have nothing to conceal in the matter, Cap 
 tain," answered Bayard after a moment's silence. 
 " There are legalized crimes in Angel Alley which 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 319 
 
 I shall fight till I die. But it will be slow work. 
 I don't do it by lobbying. I have my own me- 
 thods, and you must grant me my own counsel." 
 
 "The dawn that rises on the Trawls without 
 their license," slowly said the captain, "that day ? 
 sir, you may as well call on the city marshal for 
 a body-guard. You '11 need it ! " 
 
 " Oh, you and Job will answer, I fancy," re- 
 plied Bayard, laughing. 
 
 He went straight home and to bed, where he 
 slept fitfully till nearly noon of the next day. He 
 was so exhausted with watching and excitement, 
 that there is a sense of relief in thinking that the 
 man was granted this one night's rest before that 
 which was to be befell him. 
 
 For, at midnight of the succeeding night, he 
 was awakened by the clang of the city bells. It 
 was a still night, there was little wind, and the tide 
 was calm at the ebb. The alarm was quite distinct 
 and easily counted. One ? two ? three ? Six ? 
 One two three. Six. Thirty-six. Thirty- 
 six was the call from the business section of the 
 town. This alarm rang in for the board of trade, 
 Angel Alley, the wharves, and certain banks and 
 important shops. 
 
 U A fire on the wharves, probably," thought 
 Bavard ; he turned on his pillow ; " the fire-boat 
 will reach it in three minutes. It is likely to be 
 some slight affair." 
 
 One two three. Six. One two three. 
 Six. One - two. One - two. The sounding of the 
 
320 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 general alarm aroused him thoroughly. He got 
 to the window and flung open the blinds. In the 
 heart of the city, two miles away, a pillar of flame 
 shot straight towards the sky, which hung above it 
 as red as the dashed blood of a mighty slaughter., 
 
 At this moment a man came running, and leaned 
 on Mrs. Granite's fence, looking up through the 
 dark. 
 
 " Mr. Bayard ! Mr. Bayard ! " he called loudly. 
 
 "Bob! Is that you? What is it? Where is it?" 
 
 " It 's in Angel Alley, sir." 
 
 " Be there in a minute, Bob." 
 
 " But, Mr. Bayard, sir there 's them as think 
 you 're safer where you be. Job Slip says you stay 
 to home if you love us, Mr. Bayard ! " 
 
 " Wait for me, Bob," commanded Bayard. " I 'm 
 half dressed now." 
 
 " But, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Bayard you ain't got 
 it through your head I said I would n't be the 
 man to tell you, and I wish to gollyswash I 'd stuck 
 to it." 
 
 " Bob ! It is n't the Mission ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir yes ! They 've set us afire ! " 
 
 "Now, Bob," said the minister, suddenly shoot- 
 ing up in the dark at Bob's side, with coat and vest 
 over his arm, " run for it ! Run ! " 
 
 The building was doomed from the first. The 
 department saw that, at a glance, and concentrated 
 its skill upon the effort to save the block. 
 
 The deed had been dexterously done. The fire 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 321 
 
 sprang from half a dozen places, and had been burn- 
 ing inwardly, it was thought, for an hour before it 
 was discovered. The people had been too poor to 
 hire a night-watchman. 
 
 " We trusted Providence," muttered Captain 
 Hap. " And this is what we get for it ! " 
 
 The crowd parted before the minister when he 
 came panting up, with Bob a rod behind. Bayard 
 had got into his coat on the way, but he had not 
 waited for his hat. In the glare, with his bared 
 head and gray-white face, he gathered an unearthly 
 radiance. 
 
 He made out to get under the ropes, and sprang 
 up the steps of the burning building. 
 
 " No, sir ! " said the chief respectfully ; " you 
 can't get in, now. We 've saved all we could." 
 
 " There are some things I must have. I can get 
 at them. I 've done this before. Let me in ! " 
 commanded the minister. 
 
 All the coherent thought he had at that moment 
 was that he must save some of the pictures 
 Helen's pictures that she had given to the people. 
 In that shock of trouble they took on a delirious 
 preciousness to him. 
 
 " Let me into my own chapel ! " he thundered. 
 
 But the chief put his hand upon the preacher's 
 foreast, and held it there. 
 
 " Not another step, Mr. Bayard. The roof will 
 fall in five minutes. Get back, sir ! " 
 
 He heard his people calling him ; strong hands 
 took hold of him ; pitying faces looked at him. 
 
322 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Come, Mr. Bayard," some one said gently < 
 " Turn away with us. Don't see it go." 
 
 He protested no more, but obeyed quietly. For 
 the first time since they had known him, he fal 
 tered, and broke before his people. They led him 
 away, like a wounded man. He covered his face 
 when the crash came. The sparks flew far and 
 hot over the wharves, and embers followed. The 
 water hissed as it received them. 
 
 At the first gray of dawn, the minister was on 
 the ground again. Evidently he had not slept. 
 There was a storm in the sky, and slow, large flakes 
 of snow were falling. The crowd had gone, and 
 the Alley was deserted. Only a solidary guardian 
 of the ruins remained. Bayard stood before them, 
 and looked up. Now, a singular thing had hap- 
 pened. The electric wire which fed the illumi- 
 nated sign in front of the mission had not been 
 disconnected by the fire ; it had so marvelously 
 and beautifully happened ; only a few of the little 
 colored glass globes had been broken, and four 
 white and scarlet words, paling before the coming 
 day, and blurring in the snow, but burning stead- 
 ily, answered the smothered tongues of fire and lips 
 of smoke which muttered from the ruins. 
 
 As day opened, the people began to collect upon 
 the spot. Expressions of awe or of superstition 
 were heard, as they looked up and read, serene 
 and undisturbed against the background of the 
 rising storm, 
 
 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 
 
XXII. 
 
 IMMEDIATELY upon the destruction of the 
 chapel, two things happened. The first, was a 
 visit from Mr. Hermon Worcester. Nothing 
 could have been more unexpected ; and when Bay- 
 ard, coming into his lodgings one dreary after- 
 noon, found his uncle in the bony rocking-chair, 
 the young man was much moved. 
 
 Mr. Worcester, not untouched by the sight of 
 his nephew's emotion, held out an embarrassed 
 hand. Bayard took it warmly. He had learned 
 the lesson of loneliness so thoroughly, that he was 
 ill prepared for the agitation of this little, com- 
 mon, human incident. 
 
 " You are ill, Manuel ! " cried the elder man. 
 " Good heavens, how you have changed ! I had 
 no idea You should have told me ! " he 
 added, with the old autocratic accent. " I ought 
 to have been informed. . . . And this is how you 
 live ! " 
 
 Hermon Worcester looked slowly about him ( 
 His eye fell on the paper screen, the mosquito-net 
 portiere, the iron angel on the stove, the hard 
 lounge, the old carpet, the stained wall-paper ; he 
 scrutinized the bookcase, he glanced at the Saint 
 Michael. When he saw the great Christ, he 
 coughed, and turned his face away; got \v nn 
 
324 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 easily, and went into the bedroom, where he fell 
 to examining the cotton comforters. 
 
 "At least," he said sharply, "you could have 
 sent for your own hair mattress ! Nobody has 
 slept on it, since " 
 
 He broke off, and returned to the skeleton rock 
 ing-chair, with an expression of discomfiture so 
 serious that Bayard pitied him. He hastened to 
 say: 
 
 " Oh, I have done very well, very well indeed, 
 Uncle. A man expects to rough it, if he chooses 
 to be a home missionary. Give yourself no con- 
 cern now." 
 
 If there were an almost uncontrollable accent 
 on the last word, Mr. Hermon Worcester failed to 
 notice it. Something in that other phrase had 
 arrested his Orthodox attention. A home mis- 
 sionary ? A home missionary. Was it possible 
 to regard this heretic boy in that irreproachable 
 light ? 
 
 To the home missions of his denomination 
 Mr. Worcester was a large and important con- 
 tributor. Now and then an ecclesiastical Dives 
 is to be found who gives a certain preference to 
 the heathen of his own land before .those of India, 
 Africa, and Japan ; Mr. Worcester had always 
 been one of these illuminated men. Indeed, 
 Japan, Africa, and India had been known to 
 reflect upon the character of his Christianity for 
 the reason that his checks were cashed for the 
 benefit of Idaho, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 325 
 
 To this hour it had not occurred to Mr. Worces- 
 ter that the heathen of Windover could be pro- 
 perly rated as in the home missionary field. Even 
 the starving pastors in the northern counties of 
 Vermont might have gratefully called for yearly 
 barrels of his old clothes ; but Windover ? Why, 
 that was within two hours of Boston ! And, alas 5 
 the Vermont ministers were always " sound." In 
 Idaho, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, where was a 
 corrupt theology to be found ? 
 
 But that phrase had lodged in some nick of Mr. 
 Worcester's rnind ; and he could no more brush it 
 off than one can brush away a seed out of reach in 
 the crevice of a rock. He regarded his nephew 
 with a certain tolerance, warmly tinged by com- 
 passion. 
 
 " The boy is a wreck," he said to himself. 
 " Manuel will die if this goes on. He might have 
 expected it. And so might I." 
 
 The old man's face worked. He spoke, crossly 
 enough. Bayard remembered that he always used 
 to be cross when he was touched. 
 
 " What 's to happen now ? Eeady to give it 
 up, Manuel?" 
 
 " I am ready to begin all over again," replied 
 Emanuel, smiling. 
 
 His voice had the ring that his uncle knew too 
 well ; when he was a little fellow, and bound to do 
 a thing whether or no, he spoke in that tone, and 
 always with that engaging smile. 
 
 " Who pays for this phoenix ? " asked the man 
 
326 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 of business brusquely. " I passed by your place. 
 It is a fine heap of ashes. A curious sight I saw 
 there, too. That sign you hang out those four 
 words." 
 
 Bayard nodded. 
 
 "It is a pleasant accident. The department 
 says it is almost unprecedented. Oh, we shall 
 crawl up somehow, Uncle ! I don't feel verr 
 anxious. The town hall is already hired for 
 temporary use. There is great excitement in the 
 city over the whole affair. You see, it has reached 
 the proportions, now, of a deadlock between the 
 rum interest and the decent citizens. Our treas- 
 urer is circulating some sort of a paper. I think 
 he hopes to collect a few hundreds enough to 
 tide us over till we can float off. I don't know 
 just how it is all coming out. Of course we can't 
 expect the help that an ordinary church would get 
 in a similar trouble." 
 
 " I 'm glad if you recognize that fact, Manuel," 
 replied Mr. Worcester uncomfortably. In his 
 heart he was saying, "The boy has his mother's 
 splendid Worcester pride. He '11 perish here, like 
 a starving eagle on a deserted crag, but he won't 
 ask me ! " 
 
 "You need a new building," observed Mr. 
 Worcester, with that quiet way of putting a start 
 ling thing which was another Worcester quality. 
 " You seem to have made from your own point 
 of view, of course what any man of affairs would 
 call a success here. Of course, you understand, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 327 
 
 Manuel, that I cannot approve of your course. It 
 has been the greatest grief of my life." 
 
 Bayard hastened to observe that his comprehen- 
 sion of this point was not limited. 
 
 " From your point of view, not mine, Manuel, I 
 should, as a man of business, suggest that a new 
 building your own property something to im- 
 press business men, you know ; something to give 
 material form to that undoubtedly sincere and 
 however mistaken unselfish, religious effort that 
 you have wasted in this freezing hole. ... I 
 wonder, Manuel, if you could put the draughts on 
 that confounded box-burner with the angel atop ? 
 I don't know when I Ve been so chilly ! " 
 
 Bayard hastened to obey this request, without 
 intimating that the draughts were closed to save 
 the coal. This species of political economy was 
 quite outside of his uncle's experience, and yet, 
 perhaps, the man of business had more imagina- 
 tion than his nephew gave him credit for ; he said 
 abruptly : 
 
 " Look here, Manuel, I 've got to get the seven 
 o'clock train home, you know, and I 'd best do the 
 errand I came on, at once. You know those old 
 Virginia mines of your mother's ? There was a 
 little stock there, you remember? It went below 
 zero. Has n't been heard of for twenty years. 
 But it remained on the inventory of the estate, 
 you know. Well, it 's come up. There 's a new 
 plant gone in Northern enterprise, you know 
 and the stock is on the market again. There is 
 
328 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 only a trifle, a paltry two thousand, if well handled. 
 It 's yours, you see, whatever there is of it. I 
 came down to ask if you would like to have me 
 force a sale for you." 
 
 " Two thousand dollars ! " cried Bayard, turning 
 pale. " Why, it would almost build me at least, 
 it would furnish a new chapel. We had about sc 
 much of inside property library, piano, pictures, 
 settees, hyrnii-books, and all that it is all a dead 
 loss. Unfortunately, Mr. Bond had never insured 
 it we were so poor ; every dollar tells ! " 
 
 " Then he was a very bad man of business for 
 a church for a missionary officer ! " cried Mr. 
 Worcester irritably ; " and I hope you '11 do no- 
 thing of the kind. You could spend that amount 
 on your personal necessities inside of six months, 
 and then not know it, sir ! You are I hope, 
 Manuel," sternly, " that you will regard my wish, 
 for once, in one respect, before I die. Don't fling 
 your mother's money into the bottomless pit of 
 this unendowed, burnt-out, unpopular enterprise ! 
 Wait awhile, Manuel. Wait a little and think it 
 over. I don't think, under the circumstances,'* 
 added Mr. Worcester with some genuine dignity, 
 " that it is very much to ask." 
 
 " Perhaps it is not," replied Bayard thought- 
 fully. " At least, I will consider it, as you say." 
 
 Four days after, an envelope from Boston wa? 
 put into Bayard's hand. It contained a type- 
 written letter setting forth the fact that the writer 
 desired to contribute to the erection of the new 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 329 
 
 chapel in Windover known by the name of Christ- 
 love, and representing a certain phase oi home 
 missionary effort the inclosed sum. It was a 
 bank draft for twenty-five hundred dollars. The 
 writer withheld his name, and requested that no 
 effort be made to identify him. He also desired 
 that his contribution be used, if possible, in a con- 
 ditional character, to stimulate the growth of a 
 collection sufficient to put the building and the 
 mission behind it, upon a suitable basis. 
 
 The following day Mr. Worcester sent to Bay- 
 ard by personal check the remnant of his mother's 
 property. This little sum seemed as large, now, to 
 the Beacon Street boy, as if he had been reared in 
 one of the Vermont parsonages to which his uncle 
 sent old overcoats ; or, one might say, as if he 
 had never left the shelter of that cottage under 
 the pine grove in Bethlehem, where his eyes first 
 opened upon the snow-girt hills. Self-denial speaks 
 louder in the blood than indulgence, after all ; and 
 who knew how much of Bayard's simple manliness 
 in the endurance of privation he owed to the pluck 
 of the city girl who left the world for love of one 
 poor man, and to become the mother of another ? 
 
 Bayard had scarcely adjusted his mind to these 
 events when he received from Helen Carruth this 
 letter : 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. BAYARD, My little note of 
 sympathy with your great trouble did not deserve 
 so prompt an answer. I thank you for it. I could 
 
330 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 not quite make up my mind to tell you, in the midst 
 of so much care and anxiety, what I can delay no 
 longer in saying " 
 
 Bayard laid down the letter. The room grew 
 black before his starting eyes. 
 
 " There is another man," he thought. " She is 
 engaged. She cannot bear to tell me." 
 
 Sparks of fire leaped before his eyeballs. Black 
 swung into purple into gray light returned ; 
 and he read on : 
 
 " If I flatter myself in supposing that you might 
 mind it a little, why, the mistake hurts nobody, 
 neither you nor me ; but the fact is we are not 
 coming to Windover this summer. We sail for 
 Europe next week. 
 
 " Father has decided quite suddenly, and there 
 is nothing to be done but to go. It is something 
 to do with Exegesis, if you please ! There is a 
 mistake in Exegesis, you know, in the New 
 Version. It seems to me a pretty Old Version by 
 this time, hut father has always been stirred up 
 about it. He has been corresponding with a Ger- 
 man Professor for a year or two on this burning 
 subject. I have an inarticulate suspicion that, 
 between them, they mean to write the New Testa- 
 ment over again. Could they do another Version ? 
 How many Versions can be versed ? 
 
 " I never graduated, you know ; I never even 
 attended a Cesarea Anniversary in my life (and 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 331 
 
 you can't think how it shocked the Trustees at 
 dinner, and that was such fun, so I kept on not 
 going!), and ! can't be expected to fathom these 
 matters. Anyhow, it is mixed up with the Au- 
 thenticity of the Fourth Gospel, and the Effect of 
 German Rationalism upon the Evangelical Faith, 
 It is a reason full of capital letters and Orthodoxy, 
 
 and go he will. He won't leave mother behind, 
 for he is one of the men who believe in living with 
 their wives ; he 's just as dependent on his women- 
 kind when he 's engaged in a theological row, as a 
 boy who 's got hurt at football; and I 've got to 
 go to take care of the two of them. So there it is ! 
 I think there is a convention in Berlin an Exe- 
 getical Something anyhow, there 's a date, and 
 live up to it we must. He has sublet the Flying 
 Jib to the Prudential Committee of the A. B. C. 
 F. M. I mean to one of it, with six grand- 
 children. Think how they '11 punch their fists 
 through our lace curtains ! I wish you "d go down 
 and tell Mr. Salt they shan't have my dory. 
 Could n't you manage to use it yourself ? And I 
 
 I can't take Joey Slip to the circus, nor sit 
 down in sackcloth on the ashes of Christlove 
 Chapel to help you. 
 
 "Truly, dear friend, I meant to help this 
 summer. And I am disappointed, if you care to 
 know it. Yours faithfully, 
 
 "HELEN CARRUTH. 
 
 64 1 forgot to say that father has doubled up his 
 
832 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 lectures, and the Trustees have given him the 
 whole summer term. This, I believe, is in view of 
 the importance of the quarrel over the Fourth 
 Gospel. We sail in the Scythia a week from 
 Saturday." 
 
 It was early afternoon of the next day, when 
 Helen, standing in her window to draw the shades, 
 glanced over automatically at the third-story north- 
 west corner front of Galilee Hall. The room had 
 long since been occupied by a middler with blue 
 spectacles and a peaked beard; a long-legged 
 fellow, who was understood to be a Hebrew 
 scholar, and quite Old School, and was expected 
 to fill a large parish without offending the senior 
 deacon. Privately, Helen hated the middler. 
 But the eye that had learned to wander at sunset 
 across the Seminary " yard " to the window blazing 
 in gold and glory, had slowly unlearned the lesson 
 of its brief and pleasant habit. Even yet, on blue- 
 white winter days, when life stood still to freeze on 
 Cesarea Hill, Helen found herself drearily looking 
 at the glittering glass as one looks at the smile 
 on a face from which the soul has fled. 
 
 It was still many hours to suuset, and the early 
 April afternoon fell gustily arid gray upon the 
 snows of Cesarea. It was not a sunny day, and 
 Cesarea was at her worst. Helen idly watched a 
 figure splashing through two feet of slush " across 
 lots " over the Seminary grounds from the Trus. 
 tees' Hotel. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 333 
 
 "A post-graduate," she thought, "back on a 
 visit. Or, more likely, a minister without a pul- 
 pit, coming to Cesarea after a parish, or places to 
 supply. Probably he has seven children and a 
 mother-in-law to support. If he 's 4 sound ' he 11 
 come to Father no yes. Why, yes ! " 
 
 She drew suddenly back from the window. It 
 was Emaimel Bayard. 
 
 He waded through the slush as quickly as so 
 tired a man could. He had walked from the 
 station, saving his coach fare, and had made but 
 feint of being a guest at the hotel, where he had 
 not dined. He was not quite prepared to let 
 Helen know that he had lunched on cold johnny- 
 cake and dried beef, put up by Mrs. Granite in 
 a red cotton doily, and tenderly pinned over by 
 Jane with a safety-pin. 
 
 He lifted his eyes to the gloomy landscape for 
 illumination, which it denied him. He knew no 
 more than the snow professor what he should do, 
 what he should say, no, nor why he had lapsed into 
 this great weakness, and come to Cesarea at all. 
 He felt as if he might make, indeed, a mortal mis- 
 take, one way or the other. He pleaded to him- 
 self that he must see her face once more, or perish. 
 Nature was mightier than he, and drove him on, 
 as it drives the strongest of us in those reactions 
 from our strenuous vow and sternest purpose, for 
 which we have lacked the simple foresight to 
 provide in our plan of life. 
 
 There was a new snow professor, by the way, 
 
334 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 comfortably melting before the pump beside the 
 Academy commons. He had been considered 
 sounder than any of his predecessors, and had been 
 supplied with a copy of St. Augustine's Confes- 
 sions, which he perused with a corncob pipe be- 
 tween his lips of ice. A Westminster catechism 
 ornamented his vest pocket. He was said to have 
 slumped beautifully, when the thaw came. 
 
 Bayard ^hot a tolerant smile at the snow pro- 
 fessor's remains, as he came up the steps. 
 
 Helen herself answered his ring. Both of them 
 found this so natural that neither commented upon 
 this little act of friendliness. 
 
 The Professor was at his lecture ; and Mrs. 
 Carruth was making her final appearance at cer- 
 tain local Cesarea charities ; principally, to-day, at 
 the Association for Assisting Indigent Married 
 Students with blankets and baby-clothes. Helen 
 explained these facts with her usual irreverence, 
 as she ushered her visitor into the parlor. 
 
 " If I had a fortune," she observed, " I would 
 found a society in Cesarea for making it a Penal 
 Offence for a Married Man to Study for the Min- 
 istry without a Visible Income. The title is a little 
 long, don't you think ? How could we shorten it ? 
 It 's worse than the Cruelty to Animals thing. Mr. 
 Bayard ? why, Mr. Bayard ! " 
 
 When she saw the expression of his face, her 
 own changed with remorseful swiftness. 
 
 64 You are perfectly right," he said with sudden, 
 smiting incisiveness. " You are more than right. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 335 
 
 It is the greatest act of folly of my life that I am 
 here." 
 
 He stood still, and looked at her. The despair 
 she saw in his eyes seemed to her a measureless, 
 bottomless thing. 
 
 " I had to come," he said. " How could I let yon 
 go, without you must see that I had to look 
 upon your face once more. Forgive me dear ! " 
 
 Her chin trembled, at the lingering of that last, 
 unlooked-for word. 
 
 " I have tried," said Bayard slowly. M fou won't 
 misunderstand me if I say I have tried to do the 
 best I can, at Windover ; and I have failed in it," 
 he added bitterly, " from every point of view, and 
 in every way ! " 
 
 " As much as that," said Helen, " happened to 
 the Founder of the Christian religion. You are 
 presumptuous if you expect anything different." 
 
 "You are right," answered Bayard, with that 
 instinctive humility which was at once the strongest 
 and the sweetest thing about him. " 1 accept your 
 rebuke." 
 
 " Oh," cried Helen, holding out her hands, " 1 
 could n't rebuke you ! I " she faltered. 
 
 " You see," said Bayard slowly, " that 's just 
 the difference, the awful, infinite difference. All 
 His difficulties were from the outside." 
 
 " How do you know that ? " asked Helen quickly,, 
 
 " I don't," replied Bayard thoughtfully. " I 
 don't know. But I have been accustomed to think 
 so. Perhaps I am under the traditions yet ; per- 
 
336 A SINGULAR LIFE, 
 
 haps I am no nearer right than the other Chris- 
 tians I have separated myself from. But mine, 
 you see my obstacles, the things that make it so 
 hard the only thing that makes it seem impos- 
 sible for me to go on is within myself. You 
 don't suppose He ever loved a woman as I 
 love you ? It 's impossible ! " cried the young man. 
 "Why, there are times when it seems to me that if 
 the salvation of the world hung in one scale, and 
 you in the other as if I " He finished by a 
 blinding look. Her face drooped, but did not fall. 
 He could see her fingers tremble. " It was some- 
 thing," he went on dully, " to see you ; to know that 
 I why, all winter I have lived on it, on the know- 
 ledge that summer was coming that you Oh, 
 you can't know ! You can't understand ! I could 
 bear all the rest ! " he cried. " This this 
 
 His sentence broke, and was never completed ; 
 for Helen looked up into his face. It was ashen, 
 and all its muscles were set like stiffening clay. 
 She lifted her eyes and gave them to him. 
 
 "I do understand. ... I Jo," she breathed. 
 kt Would it make you any happier if you knew 
 if I should tell you of course, I know what you 
 said ; that we can't . . . but would it be any easier 
 if [ should tell you that I have loved you all the 
 time?" 
 
XXIII. 
 
 To the end of her life Helen will see the look OB 
 Emanuel Bayard's face when she had spoken these 
 words. 
 
 With more of terror than delight, the woman's 
 nature sprang, for that instant, back upon itself. 
 Would she have recalled what she had said ?' It 
 is possible ; for now she understood how he loved 
 her, and perceived that she had never understood 
 what a man's love is. 
 
 Yet, when he spoke, it was with that absence 
 of drama, with that repression amounting almost 
 to commonplace, which characterize the intensest 
 crises of experience. 
 
 " Do you ? " he said. " Have you ? " 
 
 And at first that was all. But his voice shook, 
 and his hand ; and his face went so white that he 
 seemed like a man smitten rather by death than 
 by love. 
 
 Helen, in a pang of maiden fright, had moved 
 away from him, and retreated to the sofa ; he sank 
 beside her silently. Leaning forward a little, he 
 covered his eyes with one hand. The other rested 
 on the cushion within an inch of her purple dress ; 
 he did not touch her ; he did not touch it. Helen 
 felt sorry, seeing him so troubled and wrung ; her 
 heart went out in a throb of that maternal compas- 
 
338 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 sion which is never absent from the love of any 
 woman for any man. 
 
 " Oh," she sighed, " I meant to make y(Tu happy, 
 to give you comfort ! And now I have made you 
 unhappy ! " 
 
 u You have made me the happiest of all miser- 
 able men ! " 
 
 He raised his head, and looked at her till hers 
 was the face to fall. 
 
 " Oh, don't ! " she pleaded. " Not like that ! " 
 
 But he paid no heed to this entreaty. The 
 soul of the saint and the heart of the man made 
 duel together ; and the man won, and exulted in 
 it, and wondered how he dared ; but his gaze 
 devoured her willfully. The first embrace of the 
 eyes more delicate, more deferent, and at once 
 less guarded than the meeting of hands or clasp of 
 arms he gave her, and did not restrain it. Be- 
 fore it, Helen felt more helpless than if he had 
 touched her. She seemed to herself to be annihi- 
 lated in his love. 
 
 " Happy ? " he said exultingly, u you deify 
 me ! You have made a god of me ! " 
 
 " No," she shook her head with a little teasing 
 smile, " I have made a man of you." 
 
 " Then they are one thing and the same ! " 
 cried the lover. " Let me hear you say it. Tel] 
 it to me again ! " 
 
 She was silent, and she crimsoned to the brows. 
 
 " You are not sure ! " he accused her. " You 
 want to take it back. It was a madness, an im- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 339 
 
 pulse. You don't mean it. You do not, you have 
 not loved me. . . . How could you?" he added 
 humbly. "You know I never counted on it, 
 never expected, did not trust myself to think of it 
 all this while." 
 
 She lifted her head proudly. 
 
 " I have nothing to take back. It was not an 
 impulse. I am not that kind of woman. I 
 have been meaning to tell you when you gave 
 me the chance. I love you. I have loved you 
 ever since " 
 
 She stopped. 
 
 " Since when? How long have you loved me ? 
 Come ! Speak ! I will know ! " commanded 
 Bayard deliriously. 
 
 " Oh, what is going to be gained if I tell you ? " 
 
 Helen gave him a prisoner's look. She turned 
 her head from side to side rebelliously, as if she 
 had flown into a cage whose door was now unex- 
 pectedly shut. 
 
 " I meant to make you happy. All I say seems 
 to make everything worse. I shall tell you 
 nothing; more." 
 
 O 
 
 " You will tell me," he said in a tone of calm 
 authority, " all I ask. It is my affair whether I 
 am happy or wretched. Yours is to obey my 
 wish : because you love me, Helen." 
 
 His imperious voice fell to a depth of tenderness 
 in which her soul and body seemed to sink and 
 drown. 
 
 " I have loved you," she whispered, " ever since 
 
340 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 that night, the first time I saw you here, in my 
 father's house." 
 
 " Now, sir ! " she added, with her sudden, pretty 
 willfulness, " make the most of it. I 'm not 
 ashamed of it, either. But I shall be ashamed of 
 you if this if after I 've said it all, it does n't 
 make you happy. . . . That 's all I care for," she 
 said quietly. " It is all I care for in this world." 
 
 " Oh, what shall we do?" pleaded Bayard. 
 
 "You have your work," said Helen dreamily, 
 " and I your love." "j^to (\^ ^ /H^^^^CXW 
 
 Her voice sank to a whisper. 
 
 " Is that enough for you ? " demanded the man. 
 " I shall perish of it, I shall perish ! " 
 
 Something in his tone and expression caused 
 Helen to regard him keenly. He looked so 
 wasted, so haggard, that her heart stood still, and 
 said to her, " This is truer than he knows." 
 
 " No," she answered with a sweet, womanly 
 composure, " it is not enough for me." 
 
 "And yet," he said with the brutality of the tor- 
 mented, " I cannot, I must not, ask you to be my " 
 
 She put the tips of her fingers to his lips to 
 check the word. He seized her hand and held 
 it there ; then, for he came to himself, he relin- 
 quished it, and laid it down. 
 
 "Dear," said Helen, " I shouldn't mind it ... 
 to be poor. I want you to understand to know 
 how it is. I have never felt . . . any other way. 
 It shall be just as you say," she added with a 
 gentleness which gave a beautiful dignity to her 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 341 
 
 words. " We need not ... do it, because I say 
 this. But I wanted you to know that I was not- 
 afraid of a hard life with you." 
 
 " Oh, you cannot understand," he groaned. w It 
 is no picturesque poverty you would have to meetc 
 It would mean cold, hunger, misery you 've never 
 thought of, cruel suffering for you. It would 
 mean all that a man has no right to ask a woman 
 to endure for him, because he loves her ... as I 
 love you." 
 
 " I could starve," said Helen. 
 
 " God help us ! " cried the man. Nothing else 
 came to his dry lips. 
 
 Then Helen answered him in these strong and 
 quiet words : " I told you I would trust you, and 
 I shall do it to the end. When you are ready for 
 me, I shall come. I am not afraid of anything, 
 except that you should suffer and that I could not 
 comfort you. If you never see the way to think 
 it right ... I can wait. I love you ; and I am 
 yours to take or leave." 
 
 "This," whispered Bayard reverently, for he 
 could have knelt before her, " is a woman's love ! 
 I am unworthy of it and of you." 
 
 " Oh, there is the other kind of woman," said 
 Helen, trying rather unsuccessfully to smile. 
 " This is only my way of loving. I am not 
 ashamed of it." 
 
 "Ashamed of it ? It honors you ! It glorifies 
 you ! " 
 
 He held out his arms ; but she did not swerve 
 
342 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 towards them ; they dropped. She seemed to him 
 encompassed in a shining cloud, in which her own 
 celestial tenderness and candor had wrapped and 
 protected her. 
 
 " Love me ! " he pleaded. " Love me, trust me, 
 till we can think. I must do right by you, what- 
 ever it means to me" 
 
 " We love each other," repeated Helen, holding 
 out her hands, " and I trust you. Let us live on 
 that a little while, till we till you " 
 
 But she faltered, and her courage forsook her 
 when she looked up into his face. All the anguish 
 of the man that the woman cannot share, and may 
 not understand, started out in visible lines and 
 signs upon his features ; all the solemn responsi- 
 bility for her, for himself, and for the unknown 
 consequences of their sacred passion ; the solitary 
 burden, which it is his to wear in the name of love, 
 and which presses hardest upon him whose spirit is 
 higher and stronger than mere human joy. 
 
 But at this moment a sound was heard upon the 
 stone steps of the Queen Anne house. It was the 
 footfall of the Professor himself, returning from 
 his closing lecture of the series on Eschatology. 
 Mrs. Carruth pattered behind him with short 5 
 stout steps. She had wound the affairs of the 
 Association for Assisting Indigent Married Stu- 
 dents with Blankets, to a condition in which they 
 could run along without her till the exegetical trip 
 to the German Professor's in Berlin should be 
 over, and the slush of Cesarea should know her 
 again. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 THE summer slid, Bayard knew not how. They 
 separated as so many confused lovers do in the 
 complicated situations of our later life ; wherein 
 we love no longer in the old, outright, downright 
 way, when men and women took each other for 
 better, for worse, and dared to run the risk of 
 loving, without feeling responsible for the conse- 
 quences. We are past all that ; and whether it is 
 the worse or the better for us, who shall say ? 
 
 At least, these two had the healthy ring to their 
 love ; in that great and simple feeling was no de- 
 linquency or default. Bayard did not hesitate or 
 quibble one day a lover, the next a prudential 
 committee, after the fashion of such feeble mathe- 
 maticians as go by the name of men, to-day. He 
 was incapable of calculating his high passion ; 
 there was no room in his soul or body for a doubt 
 to take on lease of life. He loved her ; as the 
 greatest of women might be proud and humble to 
 be loved ; as the smallest would be vain to be. 
 
 He loved her too much to make her miserable ; 
 and he knew, with that dreary, practical perception 
 of the truth sometimes but rarely granted to men 
 of the seer's temperament, that he could not make 
 her happy. Between love and joy a dead wall 
 shut down ; it seemed to him to reach from the 
 
344 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 highest heavens to the waters under the earth. 
 What elemental chaos could rend it? What 
 miracle was foreordained to shatter it? Would 
 the busy finger of God stretch out to touch it ? 
 
 " God knows," he wrote her. " And He pur 
 posss, I am fain to believe, if He purposes anything 
 we do or suffer. The hour may come, and the way 
 might clear. More incredible things have hap- 
 pened to men and women loving less than we. If 
 I can, I claim you when I can. Oh, wait for me, 
 and trust me ! Life is so short ; it is not easy. 
 Sometimes madness enters into me, to fling all 
 these cold, these cruel considerations, thes'e things 
 we call honor, unselfishness, chivalry, to the gales 
 . . . Then I come to myself. I will not wrong 
 you. Help me to bear to live without you till I 
 see your face again." 
 
 Helen wrote him noble letters ; brave, womanly, 
 and as trustful as the swing of the earth in its 
 orbit. It is not too much to say that few women 
 in her place would have shown the strong compos- 
 ure of this ardent girl. The relation between 
 acknowledged lovers unbetrothed is one whose 
 difficulty only an inspired delicacy can control. 
 Helen's clear eyes held no shadows. The dark 
 wing of regret for a moment's weakness never 
 brushed between her heart and this Sir Galahad 
 who loved her like man and spirit too. Few 
 women reared as she had been would have trusted 
 the man as she did ; we may add that fewer men 
 would have deserved it. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 345 
 
 Emanuel Bayard did. Her heart knew him for 
 one of the sons of light, who will not, because he 
 cannot, cause the woman whom he loves an hour's 
 regret that she has believed in him utterly and 
 told him so. Now, the value of a woman's intui- 
 tion in most of the problems or relations of life 
 cannot be overestimated ; when she loves, it is the 
 least reliable of her attributes or qualities. Helen 
 in her composed way recognized this fact perfectly, 
 but it gave her no uneasiness. 
 
 " My own perception might fail me," she wrote. 
 " You could not. It is not my own sense of what 
 is best to do that I am trusting, in this : it is 
 you." 
 
 When he read these words, he put the paper to 
 his lips, and laid his face upon it, and covered it 
 from the sight even of his own eyes. 
 
 The date of Professor Carruth's return was set 
 for early October. In September Bayard received 
 from Helen the news that her mother had met 
 with an accident a fall ; an arm was broken, and, 
 at the age of the patient, the surgeon forbade the 
 voyage. The Professor would get back to his 
 lecture-room, as he must. The two ladies were in- 
 definitely delayed in Berlin. 
 
 The winter proved a bleak one, and went with 
 Bayard as was to be expected. The devotee had 
 yet to learn how a woman's absence may work 
 upon a lover ; but of this, since he had no right to 
 do so, he did not complain. Headlong, fathoms 
 
346 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 down into his work he leaped, and with the diver's 
 calm he did the diver's duty. The new chapel pro- 
 gressed after the manner of its kind. Bayard had 
 peremptorily insisted upon the severest economy of 
 plan, demanding a building which should be a 
 " shelter for worship," he said, and nothing more. 
 Not a waste dollar went into architecture. Not a 
 shingle went into debt. No mortgage desecrated 
 the pulpit of Christlove Church. He built what 
 he could pay for, and nothing more. The dedica- 
 tion of the building was expected to take place in 
 the spring. 
 
 Meanwhile, his audiences grew upon his hands ; 
 and Wind over First Church looked darkly afi 
 Windover town hall. Orthodoxy, decorum, 
 property, position, gazed at gaping pews, and 
 regretted that " these temperance movements es- 
 tranged themselves from the churches." 
 
 Obscurity, poverty, religious doubt, sin and 
 shame and repentance jammed the aisles to hear 
 " the Christman " interpret decency and dignity 
 and the beauty of holiness. He spoke to these, 
 not with the manner of preachers, but with the 
 lips and heart of a man. Week after week 
 strange, unkempt, unlettered seamen poured in ; 
 they stood sluggishly, like forming lava, to listen 
 to him. Certain of his audiences would have 
 honored Whitefield or Robertson. Bayard's soul 
 seemed that winter alight with a sacred conflagra- 
 tion. He prayed and wrought for Windover as a 
 tongue of flame goes up to the sky because it 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 347 
 
 was the law of life and fire. It is pathetic to 
 think, now, how it would have comforted the man 
 if he had known how much they loved him these 
 undemonstrative people of the sea, for whom he 
 gave himself. The half of it was never told him. 
 Censure, and scorn, and scandal, and the fighting 
 of foes in the dark, he knew. The real capacity 
 for affection and loyalty which existed in the 
 rough, warm heart of Windover he sometimes 
 thought he understood. He did not see as we 
 
 r"5 
 
 see now that he had won this allegiance. 
 
 This was the more obscure to him because the 
 tension between himself and the liquor interests of 
 Windover was growing quietly into a serious 
 thing, and heavily occupied his attention. And 
 here we know that he was seldom deceived or 
 blinded. 
 
 His methods were deliberate, his moves were 
 intelligent, he ran no stupid risks, he measured 
 his dangers, he took them in the name of good cit- 
 izenship and good Christianity, and strode on to 
 their consequences with that martial step charac- 
 teristic of him. Of this chapter of the winter's 
 story, he wrote little or nothing to Helen. She 
 heard how the chapel grew, how the library 
 gathered, and the smoking-room was fitted ; about 
 bhe hope of a gymnasium, the vision of a bowling- 
 all^y, the schedule for lectures and entertainments ; 
 all his dreams and schemes to give homeless and 
 tempted men shelter and happiness under the rising 
 roof of Christlove ; all the little pleasures and 
 
348 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 hopes of the missionary life she shared, as Helen 
 had it in her to share the serious energy of a man's 
 life. Upon the subject of the dangers he was 
 silent. The extent to which these existed she 
 could not measure ; for Helen belonged to those 
 social and religious circles into whose experience 
 the facts in the remote lives of that worthy class 
 of people known as temperance agitators do not 
 enter. She had no traditions to enlighten her, 
 and her own joyous nature vaguely filled in the 
 darker outlines of her lover's life. How should 
 the summer girl understand the winter Windover? 
 She thought of Bayard's real situation with little 
 more vividness than if he had been a missionary 
 in Darkest Africa. Pleasant sketches of Job Slip 
 and Joey, little reminiscences of Captain Hap, and 
 Lena, pretty, womanly plans for replacing the 
 burned furniture and decorations flitted across the 
 leisurely continental tour by which she escorted 
 her mother homewards. Mrs. Carrutli was now 
 quite recovered, but had developed the theory 
 that the dangers of a midwinter voyage were les- 
 sened by every week's delay. As a result, the 
 two ladies engaged passage in February, at the 
 height of the gales. 
 
 It was a bitter winter. Two hundred Windover 
 fishermen were drowned ; and poverty of the 
 dreariest kind sat sullenly in the tragic town. 
 Bayard worked till he staggered for the women 
 and children whom the sea bereft. Afterwards a 
 cry went up out of scores of desolated homes 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 349 
 
 which told what the man had been and done in 
 Windover, when the gales went down 
 
 One night, a short time before Helen was to 
 sail, there happened to Bayard one of those little 
 mysteries which approach us so much oftener tban 
 we recognize them, that we have never properly 
 classified them ; and may be long yet in doing so c 
 
 He had been in his own rooms since noon ; for 
 there was a heavy snowstorm on, and he was con- 
 scious of obvious physical inability to brave the 
 weather unless the call of duty should be louder 
 than a certain oppression on his lungs, which he 
 had been forced of late to recognize more often 
 than usual. It was a gray day at Mrs. Granite's. 
 Jane was sad, and coughed. Her mother had cried 
 a good deal of late, and said that " Jane was goin' 
 off like her Aunt Annie before her." 
 
 Ben Trawl came sullenly and seldom, now, to see 
 the reluctant girl. 
 
 Mrs. Granite thought if Jane could go to her 
 Aunt Annie's second cousin Jenny in South 
 Carolina, for a spell, she would be cured ; but 
 Mrs. Granite said climate was only meant for rich 
 folks ; she said you lived and died here in Wind- 
 over, if your lungs was anyways delicate, like 
 frozen herring packed into a box. She was almost 
 epigrammatic for Mrs Granite. 
 
 Bayard had been sitting in his study-chair, 
 writing steadily, while his mind, with his too sensi- 
 tive sympathy, followed the fortunes of these poor 
 women who made him all the home he knew. It 
 
350 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 was towards six o'clock, and darkening fast. The 
 noise on the beach opposite the cottage was heavy ; 
 and the breakers off Ragged Rock boomed mightily. 
 
 Snow was falling so thickly that he could not 
 see the water. The fog-bell was tolling, and yells 
 of agony came from the whistling-buoy. It was 
 one of the days when a man delicately reared 
 winces with a soreness impossible to be understood 
 unless experienced, from life in a place and in a 
 position like his ; when the uncertain value of the 
 ends of sacrifice presents itself to the mind like 
 the spatter from a stream, of vitriol ; when the 
 question, Is what I achieve worth its cost ? burns 
 in upon the bravest soul, and gets no answer for 
 its scorching. 
 
 Bayard laid down his pen and paper, and looked 
 patiently out of the window ; putting his empty 
 hand in his pocket as he did so. 
 
 His eyes gazed into the curtain of the whirling 
 snow. He wondered how far out to sea it extended ; 
 how many miles of it dashed between himself and 
 Helen. It was one of the hours when she seemed 
 to fill the world. 
 
 The snowflakes took on fantastic shapes so ! 
 That was the way she held out her white hands. 
 The soft trailing of her gown sounded in the 
 room. If he turned his head, should he see her 
 standing, a vision in purple and gold, smiling, 
 warm, and sweet ? It would be such a disappoint- 
 ment not to find her ! Rather believe that he 
 should, if he would, and so not stir. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 351 
 
 Suddenly his hand in his own pocket struck an 
 object whose character he did riot at the moment 
 recall. He drew it out and looked at it. It was 
 the key of his old home in Beacon Street. 
 
 For three years, perhaps, he had not thought of 
 his uncle's words: "Keep your latch-key. You 
 will want to use it, some day." 
 
 Bayard regarded the latch-key steadily. The 
 senseless thing burned his palm as if it were trying 
 to articulate. 
 
 He never sought to explain to himself, and I see 
 no reason why we should explain for him, the sub- 
 tile meaning which went from the metal to the 
 man. 
 
 The key said, " Go ! " 
 
 And Bayard went. He made such efforts as all 
 cool-headed people make, to buffet the inexplicable, 
 and to resist an unreasonable impression. But, 
 after an hour's protest with himself, he yielded to 
 the invisible summons. 
 
 " It is a long while since I have seen my uncle," 
 he reasoned. " This may be as good a time as any 
 other to look him up." 
 
 He dressed for the storm, and took the nine 
 o'clock train to Boston. 
 
 It was blowing a blizzard when he arrived in 
 town ; and eleven o'clock. He took a carriage and 
 drove to his uncle's house. The lights were out on 
 the front of the house, and the servants asleep. 
 Bayard stood a moment irresolute. The folly of 
 his undertaking presented itself to him with em- 
 
352 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 phasis, now he was there. He could not tell when 
 he had yielded to any of that class of highly 
 wrought emotions which we call presentiments, 
 or " leadings." Impatient with himself, and sud- 
 denly vividly aware that Mr. Hermon Worcester 
 was a man who particularly objected to being 
 disturbed in his sleep, Bayard was about to call 
 the cab back to take him away, when he perceived 
 that the driver had started off, and was laboring 
 heavily up Beacon Street, with the snow to the 
 hubs of the wheels. (Who has ever fathomed 
 the inscrutable mind of the Boston cabman who 
 has to be snowed under, before he will get on 
 runners ?) Resisting no longer, Bayard softly put 
 his key in the lock. 
 
 It creaked a little, for it had grown rusty in the 
 Windover salts, but the boy's key turned in the 
 man's hand, and admitted him loyally into his old 
 home. 
 
 The hall was dark, and the house still. He 
 brushed off the snow in silence, and stood wonder- 
 ing what to do next. He felt mortified at his own 
 lack of good sense. 
 
 Why was he here? And what reason could he 
 give for this stupendous foolishness ? He dripped 
 on ths Persian rugs awhile, and, finding neither 
 enlightenment nor consolation in this moist occupa- 
 tion, proceeded to take off his overcoat and hang 
 it on his own nail on the mahogany hat-tree under 
 the stairs. When had such a shabby overcoat put 
 that venerable piece of furniture to the blush? 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 353 
 
 Never, if one excepted the case of the Vermont 
 clergyman who had been known to take a lunch 
 with his benefactor, and who received a barrel 
 of old clothes the following week. Bayard hung 
 up his wet hat, too, in the old place, took off his 
 shoes^ and crept upstairs in his stockings, as he 
 had done how many hundred nights, coming 
 home from Cambridge, late, in college days ? 
 
 His uncle's door was closed, but to his surprise, 
 he found the door of his own room open. He crept 
 in. It seemed warm and pleasant how incredibly 
 pleasant and natural ! The register seemed to be 
 open. Oh, the luxury of a furnace ! The wet and 
 tired man crawled up, feeling his way in the famil- 
 iar dark, and got down by the register. He re- 
 membered where the safety-matches used to be, 
 that struck, and made no sound. Groping, he 
 found them, in their paper match-box, set within 
 the old bronze one. He struck one, softly, and 
 looked about. In the little flare he saw that the 
 room was just as it had always been. Nothing 
 was changed or disturbed, except that his books 
 had gone to Mrs. Granite's. His bed lay turned 
 back, open for the night, as it always was; the 
 big, soft pillow, the luxurious mattresses, the light 
 warmth of the snowy blankets, invited him. His 
 mother's picture hung over the head of his bed. 
 Those old pipes and silk menus and college traps 
 and trifles were crossed on the wall by the bureau ; 
 his gun was there, and his fishing-rods. 
 
 Bayard was about to yield to his weariness, and 
 
354 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 crawl into his own bed, thinking to see his uncle 
 in the morning, as a sane man should, when his 
 attention was attracted by a slight sound in Mr. 
 Worcester's room, and something about it struck 
 the young man unpleasantly. 
 
 Without noise he opened the door of the bath- 
 room intervening between his own and his uncle's, 
 apartments. Then he perceived a crack of light 
 at the threshold of Mr. Worcester's closed door. 
 
 As he stood uncertain, and troubled, the sound 
 which he had heard was repeated. It seemed to 
 resemble the effort of difficult breathing, and was 
 accompanied by a slight groan. 
 
 Then a thick voice called, 
 
 " Partredge ? " 
 
 "Partredge always did sleep like the dead," 
 thought Bayard. " I hope he does n't neglect my 
 uncle, now he is growing old." 
 
 "Nancy? " summoned the voice again. 
 
 Nancy always woke easily and good-naturedly. 
 But Nancy heard nothing now. Bayard, afraid to 
 shock the old man Uy so astounding an appearance, 
 was moving quickly and quietly to find the ser- 
 vants, when something caused him to change his 
 purpose. Apparently, Mr. Worcester had tried 
 to reach the bell it was one of the old-fashioned 
 kind, with a long, embroidered bell-handle he 
 Jftad partly crossed the room, when Bayard inter- 
 cepted the fall, and caught him. 
 
 The gas was lighted, and recognition was instant. 
 Without shock, it seemed without surprise, Her- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 355 
 
 mon Worcester lay back in the young man's arms, 
 and smiled pleasantly into his face. 
 
 "I thought you would use the latch-key some 
 night," he said with difficulty. " You 've chosen 
 the right one, Manuel. The servants did not hear 
 and I 'm afraid I 'm not quite well, my 
 boy." 
 
 After this, he said nothing ; but lingered for 
 three days, without evident suffering, and with 
 evident content, making signs that Manuel should 
 not leave him ; which he did not, to the end. 
 
 Hermon Worcester passed on serenely, in the 
 Faith, and the prominence and usefulness thereof; 
 though the last prayer that he heard on earth came 
 from the lips of the affectionate heretic in whose 
 arms he died. 
 
 Bayard had been so long out of the world and 
 the ways of it, that it did not occur to him, till he 
 received the summons of the family lawyer, that 
 he would be required to be present at the reading 
 of his uncle's will. 
 
 " As the nearest of kin, my dear sir," suggested 
 the attorney, " the occasion will immediately con- 
 cern you, doubtless." 
 
 Bayard bowed, in silence. He did not think it 
 necessary to explain to the attorney that he had 
 been, for a long time, aware of the fact of his dis~ 
 inheritance. 
 
 " Possibly Uncle may have left me his library," 
 he thought, " or the furniture of my old room." 
 
 He had, indeed, received the library. The rest 
 
356 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 of Hermon "Worcester's fortune, barring the usual 
 souvenirs to relatives, had been divided between 
 Mr. Worcester's favorite home missionary asso- 
 ciations and Cesarea Seminary, of which he had 
 been, for thirty years, trustee. 
 
 The house on Beacon Street, with its contents, 
 went unreservedly, "and affectionately," the tes- 
 tator had expressed it, to his nephew, Emanuel 
 Bayard. 
 
 " I think," observed the lawyer at the first decent 
 opportunity, " that Mr. Worcester intended, or 
 hoped that you might make your plans of life in 
 accordance with such circumstances as would en- 
 able you to keep, and to keep up, the home- 
 stead." 
 
 " But of course," added the attorney, shrewdly 
 reading Bayard's silent face, " that might be as 
 you say impossible." 
 
 " I said nothing," replied Bayard in a low voice. 
 
 "The place is yours, without conditions," pur- 
 sued the lawyer, with polite indifference. " It can 
 be sold, or converted into income rented, if you 
 please, if ever unfortunately necessary. It would 
 seem a pity. It would bring so little. But still, 
 it could, of course, be done/' 
 
 " What do you call a little ? " asked Bayard. 
 
 " Oh, enough for a small fresh-water Professor 
 or retail grocer to get along on, if he knew how," 
 replied the Back Bay lawyer carelessly. 
 
 He mentioned the figures. 
 
 The house was old, and in need of repair ; the fur- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 357 
 
 niture out of date, and worn. The probable values 
 were not large, as the attorney said, lo the 
 pastor from Angel Alley their possession seemed 
 to represent the shock of nature involved in a 
 miracle. 
 
XXV. 
 
 HELEN was to sail for Boston the following Sat 
 
 o 
 
 urdajo It lacked three days of that date. It 
 being out of the question to reach her, now, by 
 letter, Bayard cabled to her : 
 
 Will meet you arrival steamer. Future clear 
 before me. I await you. E. B. 
 
 To this impulsive message he found himself 
 expecting a reply. The wan missionary bad burst 
 into a boyish and eager lover. Oh, that conscien- 
 tious, cruel' past ! He dashed it from him. He 
 plunged into the freedom of his heart. In honor 
 
 I O 
 
 in his delicate honor he could win her, now. 
 
 Helen did not answer the cable message. A 
 hundred hindrances might have prevented her; 
 yet he had believed she would. He thought of 
 her ardent, womanly candor, her beautiful courage, 
 her noble trust. It did not occur to him that a 
 woman has two natures, this for. the unfortunate 
 and that for the fortunate lover. One he had 
 tasted ; the other he had yet to know. 
 
 He vibrated restlessly to and fro between Wind= 
 over and Boston, where his presence was urgently 
 required in the settlement of his uncle's affairs, 
 A snowstorm set in, and increased to a gale. Ten 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 359 
 
 days passed, somehow. The steamer was due in 
 twenty-four hours. She did not arrive. 
 
 Bayard had lived in Wiudover long enough to 
 acquire the intelligent fear of the sea which char- 
 acterizes the coast ; and when the next day went, 
 and another, and the boat was admitted at head- 
 quarters to be three days overdue, he suffered the 
 unspeakable. It had been nothing less than a 
 terrible midwinter gale. Wrecks lined the coast ; 
 glasses scoured it ; watchers thronged it ; friends 
 besieged the offices of the steamship company. 
 The great line which boasted that it had never lost 
 a life held its stanchest steamer three days four 
 days overdue. 
 
 It was like him that he did not overlook his 
 duty in his trouble, but stood to his post, and 
 remembered the little service appointed for that 
 most miserable evening when he was expected to 
 be with his people. Those who were present that 
 night say that the scene was one impossible to 
 forget. Looking more like death than life, the 
 preacher prayed before them " to the God of the 
 sea." 
 
 Now, for the first time, he felt that he knew what 
 Windover could suffer. Now the torment of women 
 all their lives watching for returning srils entered 
 into his soul ; those aged men looking for the sons 
 who never came back; the blurred eyes peering off 
 Windover Point to see the half-mast flag on the 
 schooner as she tacked up the bay ; the white lips 
 that did not ask, when the boat came to anchor, 
 
360 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Which is it ? " because they dared not all this, 
 now, he understood. 
 
 His personal anguish melted into the great sum 
 of misery in the seaport town. 
 
 " If she comes back to me," he thought, " how I 
 shall work for them my poor people ! " 
 
 Now, for the first time, this devout, unselfish 
 man understood that something else than consecra- 
 tion is needed to do the best and greatest thing by 
 the human want or woe that leans upon us. Now 
 that he took hold on human experience, he saw 
 that he had everything to learn from it. The 
 knowledge of a great love, the lesson of the 
 common tie that binds the race together these 
 taught him, and he was their docile scholar. 
 
 Five days overdue ! . . . Six days. Bayard had 
 gone back to Boston, to haunt the offices and the 
 docks. Old friends met him among the white- 
 lipped watchers, and a classmate said : 
 
 "Thank God, Bayard, you haven't wife and 
 child aboard her." 
 
 He added : 
 
 " Man alive ! You look like the five days 
 dead!" 
 
 Suddenly, the stir ran along .the crowd, and 
 a whisper said : 
 
 They've sighted her! . . . She' sin!' 9 
 
 Then came the hurrah. Shouts of joy reechoed 
 about him. But Bayard's head fell upon his breast 
 in silence. At that moment he was touched upon 
 the arm by a beautiful Charter Oak cane, and, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 361 
 
 looking up, he saw the haggard face of the Pro- 
 fessor of Theology. 
 
 " I was belated," thickly articulated the Professor 
 with dry lips. " I came straight from the lecture- 
 room. It is the course on the ' Nature of Eternal 
 Punishment,' a most important course. I felt it 
 my duty to be at my desk. But Bayard, I 
 think I shall substitute to-morrow my lecture 
 (perhaps you may recall it) on the 4 Benevolence 
 and Beneficence of God.' ' 
 
 The two men leaped into the tug together, and 
 ploughed out to the steamer. 
 
 Helen was forward, leaning on the rail. Her 
 thick steamer-dress blew like muslin in the heavy 
 wind. Her eyes met Bayard's first yes, first. 
 Her father came in second, but his were too dim 
 to know it. 
 
 "Mother is in the cabin, dear Papa!" cried 
 Helen ; " we have to keep her warm and still, you 
 know." 
 
 His daughter's precious kiss invited him, but 
 the old man put Helen gently aside, and dashed 
 after his old wife. 
 
 For that moment Helen and Bayard stood to- 
 gether. Before all the world he would have taken 
 her in his arms, but she retreated a little step. 
 
 " Did you get my message ? " he demanded. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Did you answer it ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
362 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " I thought it would do just as well when I got 
 here," 
 
 " And you might have been you might never 
 have got here at all ! " cried Bayard fiercely. 
 
 " Have you been anxious ? " asked Helen de- 
 murely. 
 
 He did not think it was in her to coquette 
 with a man in a moment like that, and he made her 
 no reply. Then Helen looked full in his face, and 
 saw the havoc on it. 
 
 "Oh, you poor boy!" she whispered; *'you 
 poor, poor boy ! " 
 
 This was in the afternoon ; and he was com- 
 pelled to see her carried off to Cesarea on her 
 father's arm, without him. There was no help for 
 it ; and he waited till the next day, unreconciled 
 and nervous in the extreme. He had been so 
 overworn and overwrought, that his mind took on 
 feverish fancies. 
 
 " Something may happen by to-morrow," he 
 thought, " and I shall have never once " 
 
 He rebuked even his own thought, even then, for 
 daring to dream of the touch of her lips. But the 
 dream rode over his delicacy, and rushed on. 
 
 At an early hour the next day he went to 
 Cesarea, and sought her in her father's house. It 
 was a cold, dry, bright day. Cesarea shivered 
 under her ermine. The Professor's house was 
 warm with the luxurious, even warmth of the 
 latest modern heater, envied by the rest of the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 363 
 
 Faculty, in the old-fashioned, draughty houses of 
 the Professors' Row. Flowers in the little win- 
 dow conservatory of the drawing-room breathed 
 the soft air easily, and were of rich growth 
 and color. Helen was watering the flowers. She 
 colored when she saw him, and put down the 
 silver pitcher which she had abstracted from the 
 breakfast-room for the purpose of encouraging her 
 lemon verbena, that had, plainly, missed her while 
 she was abroad. She wore a purple morning- 
 gown with plush upon it. She had a royal look. 
 
 " How early you have come ! " she said half 
 complainingly. 
 
 He paid no attention to her tone, but deliber- 
 ately shut the door, and advanced towards her. 
 
 "I have come," he said, "to stay ; that is if 
 you will let me, Helen." 
 
 " Apparently," answered Helen, taking up the 
 pitcher, " I am not allowed a choice in the matter." 
 
 But he saw that the silver pitcher shook in her 
 hand. 
 
 " No," he said firmly, " I do not mean to give 
 you any choice. I mean to take you. I do not 
 mean to wait one hour more." 
 
 He held out his arms, but suspended them, not 
 touching her. The very air which he imprisoned 
 around her seemed to clasp her. She trembled in 
 that intangible embrace. 
 
 " It will be a poor man's home, Helen but you 
 will not suffer. I can give you common comforts. 
 I cabled to you the very hour that I knew. . . . 
 Oh, I have trusted your trust! " he said. 
 
364 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " And you may trust it," whispered Helen, sud- 
 denly lifting her eyes. 
 
 His, it seemed to her, were far above her how 
 blinding beautiful joy made them ! 
 
 Then his starved arms closed about her, and his 
 lips found hers. 
 
 The Professor of Theology sat in his study. 
 The winter sun struck his loaded shelves; the 
 backs of his books inspected him tenderly. At 
 the western window, on the lady's desk which was 
 reserved for Mrs. Carruth, her sewing-basket stood. 
 The Professor glanced at it contentedly. He had 
 never been separated from his wife so long before, 
 and they had been married thirty-five years. She 
 had unpacked that basket and taken it into the 
 study that morning, with a girlish eagerness to sit 
 down and darn a stocking while the Professor 
 wrote. 
 
 " This is a great gratification, Statira," he had 
 said. 
 
 Mrs. Carruth had gone out, now, to engage in 
 the familiar delights of a morning contest with 
 the Cesarea butcher, and the Professor was alone 
 when Emanuel Bayard sturdily knocked at the 
 study door. 
 
 The Professor welcomed the young man with 
 some surprise, but no uncertain warmth. He ex<= 
 pressed himself as grateful for the prompt attention 
 of his former pupil, on the joyful occasion of this 
 family reunion. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 365 
 
 " And it was kind of you, Bayard, too meeting 
 the ladies on that tug. I was most agreeably sur- 
 prised. I was wishing yesterday in fact, it 
 occurred to me what a comfort some young fellow 
 would have been whom I could have sent down, al! 
 those anxious days. But we never had a son. Pray 
 sit down, Mr. Bayard. ... I am just reading the 
 opinions of Olshausen on a most interesting point. 
 I have collected valuable material in Berlin. I 
 shall be glad to talk it over with you. I found 
 Professor Kammelschkreiter a truly scholarly man. 
 His views on the errors in the Revised Version are 
 the most instructed of any I have met." 
 
 "Professor," said Bayard stoutly, "will you 
 pardon me if I interrupt you for a minute? I 
 have come on a most important matter. I am 
 sorry to seem uncivil, but the fact is I I cannot 
 wait another moment, sir. . . . Sir, I have the 
 honor to tell you that your daughter has consented 
 to become my wife." 
 
 At this truly American declaration, the Professor 
 of Theology laid down his copy of Olshausen, and 
 stared at the heretic missionary. 
 
 "My daughter!" he gasped, "your wife? 
 I beg your pardon," he added, when he saw the 
 expression of Bayard's face. " But you have taken 
 me altogether by surprise. I may say that such a 
 possibility has n6 ver no, never once so much as 
 occurred to me." 
 
 " I have loved her," said Bayard tenaciously, 
 " for three years. I have never been able to ask 
 
366 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 her to marry me till now. I think perhaps my 
 uncle meant to make it possible for me to do so, 
 but I do not know. I am still a poor man, sir, 
 but I can keep her from suffering. She does me 
 the undeserved honor to love me, and she asked 
 me to tell you so." 
 
 The Professor had risen and was pacing the 
 study hotly. His face was rigid. He waved his 
 thin, long fingers impatiently at Bayard's words. 
 
 " Scholars do not dwell upon paltry, pecuniary 
 facts like parents in lower circles of society ! " cried 
 the Professor with superbly unconscious hauteur. 
 " There would have lacked nothing to my daughter's 
 comfort, sir, in any event if the right man had 
 wooed her. I was not the father to refuse him 
 mere pecuniary aid to Helen's happiness." 
 
 " And I was not the lover to ask for it," observed 
 Bayard proudly. 
 
 " Hum m m," said the Professor He stopped 
 his walk across the study floor, and looked at Bay- 
 ard with troubled respect. 
 
 " I will not take her from you at once," urged 
 Bayard gently ; " we will wait till fall if I can. 
 She has said that she will become my wife, then." 
 
 His voice sank. He spoke the last words with 
 a delicate reverence whioh would have touched a 
 ruder father than the Professor of Theology. 
 
 " Bayard," he said brokenly, " you always were 
 my favorite student. I could n't help it. I always 
 felt a certain tenderness for you. I respect your 
 intellectual traits, and your spiritual quality, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 367 
 
 Poverty, sir? What is poverty? But, Bayard s 
 you are not sound/" 
 
 Against this awful accusation Bayard had no 
 reply ; and the old Professor turned about ponder- 
 ously, like a man whose body refused to obey the 
 orders of his shocked and stricken mind. 
 
 " How can I see my daughter, my daughter, the 
 wife of a man whom the Ancient Faith has cast 
 out ? " he pleaded piteously. 
 
 He lifted his shrunken hands, as if he reasoned 
 before an invisible tribunal. His attitude and ex- 
 pression were so solemn that Bayard felt it impossi- 
 ble to interrupt the movement by any mere lover's 
 plea. Perhaps, for the first time, he understood then 
 what it meant to the old man to defend the beliefs 
 that had ruled the world of his youth and vigor ; he 
 perceived that they, too, suffered who seemed to be 
 the inflicters of suffering ; that they, too, had their 
 Calvary these determined souls who doggedly 
 died by the cross of the old Faith in whose shelter 
 their fathers and their fathers' fathers had lived and 
 prayed, had battled and triumphed. Bayard felt 
 that his own experience at that moment was an 
 intrusion upon the sanctuary of a sacred struggle. 
 He bowed his head before his Professor, and left 
 the study in silence. 
 
 But Helen, who had the small reverence for the 
 theologic drama characteristic of those who have 
 been reared upon its stage, put her beautiful arms 
 around his neck and, laughing, whispered : 
 
 " Leave the whole system of Old School Ortho* 
 doxy to me ! I can manage ! " 
 
368 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " You may manage him," smiled Bayard, " but 
 can you manage it? " 
 
 " Wait a day, and see ! " said Helen. 
 
 He would have waited a thousand for the kiss 
 with which she lifted up the words. 
 
 The next day she wrote him, at Wind over, where 
 he was dutifully trying to preach as if nothing had 
 happened : 
 
 " Papa says I have never been quite sound my= 
 self, and that he supposes I will do as I please, as 
 I always have." 
 
 There followed a little love-letter, so deliciously 
 womanly and tender, that Bayard did not for hours 
 open the remainder of his mail. W r hen he did so, 
 he read what the Professor of Theology had writ- 
 ten, after a night of prayer and vigil such as only 
 aged parents know. 
 
 " MY DEAR BAYARD," the letter said, "Take 
 her if you must, and God be with you both ! 
 I cannot find it in my heart to impose the shadow 
 of my religious convictions upon the happiness of 
 my child. I can battle for the Truth with men 
 and with demons. I cannot fight with the appeal 
 of a woman's love. I would give my life to make 
 Helen happy, and to keep her so. Do you as 
 much! Yours sincerely, 
 
 "HAGGAI CARRUTH. 
 
 " P. S. We will resume our discussion on the 
 views of Professor Kammelschkreiter at some more 
 convenient season " 
 
XXVI. 
 
 EARLY June came to Windover joyously that 
 year. May had been a gentle month, warmer than 
 its wont, and the season was in advance of its 
 schedule. 
 
 Mrs. Carruth, found paling a little, and thought 
 to be less strong since her accident abroad, had 
 been ordered to the seaside some three or four 
 weeks before the usual flitting of the family. 
 Helen accompanied her ; the Professor ran down 
 as often as he might, till Anniversary Week should 
 set him free to move his ponderously increasing 
 manuscript on the "Errors in the Revised Ver- 
 sion " from Cesarea to the clam study. The long 
 lace curtains blew in and out of the windows of the 
 Flying Jib ; Helen's dory glittered in two coats of 
 fresh pale-yellow paint upon the float ; and Helen, 
 in pretty summer gowns of corn color, or violet, or 
 white, listened on the piazza for the foot ring of 
 her lover. She was lovely that spring, with the 
 loveliness of youth and joy. Bayard watched her 
 through a mist of that wonder and that worship 
 which mark the highest altitudes of energy in a 
 man's life. It was said that he had never wrought 
 for Windover, in all his lonely time of service 
 there, as he did in those few glorified weeks. 
 
370 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 It is pleasant to think that the man had this 
 draught of human rapture ; that he tasted the 
 brim of such joy as only the high soul in the 
 ardent nature knows. 
 
 Helen offered him her tenderness with a sweet 
 reserve, alternating between compassion for what 
 lie had suffered, and moods of pretty, coquettish 
 economy of his present privilege, that taunted and 
 enraptured him by turns. He floated on clouds ; 
 he trod on the summer air. 
 
 Their marriage was appointed for September: 
 it was Helen's wish to wait till then ; and he sub- 
 mitted with such gentleness as it wrung her heart, 
 afterwards, to remember. 
 
 " We will have one perfectly happy summer," 
 she pleaded. " People can be lovers but once." 
 
 " And newly wed but once," he answered gravely. 
 
 " Dear," said Helen, with troubled eyes, " it 
 shall be as you say. You shall decide." 
 
 "God will decide it," replied the lover unex- 
 pectedly. 
 
 His eyes had a look w r hich Helen could not 
 follow. She felt shut out from it; and both 
 were silent. 
 
 Her little dreams and plans occupied hours 
 of their time together. She was full of schemes 
 for household comfort and economy, for serving 
 his people, for blessing Windover. She talked 
 of what could be done for Job Slip and Mari, 
 Joey, Lena, Captain Hap and Johnny's mother, 
 Mrs. Granite and poor Jane. Her mind dwelt 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 371 
 
 much upon all these children of the sea who 
 had grown into his heart. "Jane," she said, 
 " should have her winter in the South." She 
 spoke of Jane with a reticent but special gentle- 
 ness. They would rent the cottage ; they would 
 furnish the old dreary rooms. 
 
 Helen did not come to her poor man quite 
 empty-handed. The Professor had too much of 
 the pride of total depravity left in him for that. 
 
 " I shall be able to buy my own gowns, sir, if you 
 please ! " she announced prettily. " And I am go- 
 ing to send Mrs. Granite with Jane to her aunt 
 Annie's cousin Jenny's (was that it?) in South 
 Carolina, next winter, to get over that Windover 
 cough. We 've got to go ourselves, if you don't 
 stop coughing. No ? We '11 see ! " 
 
 " I shall stop coughing," cried Bayard joyously. 
 
 She did not contradict him, for she believed in 
 Love the Healer, as the young and the beloved do 
 So she went dreaming on. 
 
 " I came across a piece of gold tissue in Flor- 
 ence ; it will make such a pretty portiere in place 
 of that old mosquito-net ! And we '11 make those 
 dismal old rooms over into " 
 
 And Bayard, who had thought never to know 
 Paradise on earth, but only to toil for Heaven, 
 closed her sentence by one ecstatic word. 
 
 The completion of the chapel, still delayed after 
 the fashion of contractors, was approaching the 
 belated dedication day of which all Windover 
 talked, and for which a growing portion of Wind- 
 
372 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 over interested itself. Bayard was over-busy for a 
 newly betrothed man. His hours with Helen were 
 shortened; his brief snatches of delight marked 
 spaces between days of care. Erected upon the 
 site of the burned building, the new chapel rose 
 sturdily in the thick and black of Angel Alley 
 The old, illuminated, swinging sign remained, 
 "for luck," the fishermen said. It was to be 
 lighted on the day when the first service should 
 be held in the new Christlove. 
 
 There came a long, light evening, still in the 
 early half of June. Bayard was holding some ser- 
 vice or lecture in the town, and had late appoint- 
 ments with his treasurer, with Job Slip, and Cap- 
 tain Hap. He saw no prospect of freedom till too 
 late an hour to call on Helen, and had gone down 
 to tell her so ; had bade her good-night, and left 
 her. She had gone out rowing, in the delicious 
 loneliness of a much loved and never neglected 
 girl, and was turnjng the bow of the dory home- 
 wards. She drifted and rowed by turns, idle and 
 happy, dreamy and sweet. It was growing dark, 
 and the boats were setting shorewards. One, she 
 noticed (a rough, green fishing-dory from the 
 town), lay, rudely held by a twist of the painter, 
 to the cliffs, at the left, below the float. The dory 
 was empty. A sailor hat and an old tan-colored 
 reefer lay on the stern seat. Two girls sat en the 
 rocks, sheltered in one of the deep clefts or chasms 
 which cut the North Shore, talking earnestly to- 
 gether. One of them had her foot upon the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 373 
 
 painter. Neither of them noticed Helen; she 
 glanced at them without curiosity, rowed in, tossed 
 her painter to the keeper of the float, and went up 
 to the house. Her father was in Windover that 
 night; he and her mother were discussing the 
 inconceivable prospect of an Anniversary without 
 entertaining the Trustees ; they were quite ab- 
 sorbed in this vStupendous event. Helen strolled 
 out again, and off upon the cliff. 
 
 She had but just tossed her Florentine slumber- 
 robe of yellow silk upon the rocks, and thrown 
 herself upon it, when voices reached her ear. 
 Eavesdropping is an impossible crime on Wind- 
 over Point, where the cliffs are common trysting- 
 ground ; still, Helen experienced a slight discom- 
 fort, and was about to exchange her rock for some 
 less public position, when she caught a word which 
 struck the blood to her heart, and back again, like 
 a smart, stinging blow. 
 
 The voices were the voices of two girls. The 
 stronger and the bolder was speaking. 
 
 " So I come to tell you. Do as you please. If 
 you don't let on, I shall." 
 
 " Lena ! " groaned the other, " are you sure ? 
 Is n't there some mistake ? " 
 
 "Not a chance of any," replied Lena 
 
 promptly. "Do you s'pose I 'd thrust myself 
 upon you this way, and tell for nothin' ? Lord, 1 
 know how decent girls feel, bein' seen with the 
 likes of me. That 's why I set it after dark, and 
 never come nigh your house. Besides, he 's there. 
 
374 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 I warn't a-goin' to make no talk, you better "believe, 
 Jane Granite. I 've seen enough o' that." 
 
 "Mr. Bayard says you are a good girl, now," 
 faltered Jane, not knowing what to say. " I 'm 
 sure he would n't want me to be ashamed to be 
 seen with you now. And I I 'm much obliged 
 to you, Lena. Oh, Lena ! what ever in the 
 world are we going to do ? " 
 
 " Do ? " said Lena sharply ; " why, head 'em 
 off ; that 's all ! It only needs a little horse sense, 
 and to care enough. I 'd be drownded in the mud 
 in the inner harbor in a land wind I 'd light a 
 bonfire in the powder factory, and stand by it, if 
 that would do him any good. I guess you would, 
 too." 
 
 Jane made no answer. She felt that this was 
 a subject which could not be touched upon with 
 Lena. It was too dark to see how Jane looked. 
 
 " Why," said the other, " you 're shaking like a 
 topsail in a breeze o' wind ! " 
 
 " How do you mean ? What is your plan ? 
 What do you mean to have me do ? " asked Jane, 
 whose wits seemed to have dissolved in terror. 
 
 "Get him out of Windover," coolly said Lena; 
 "leastways for a spell. Mebbe it '11 blow by 
 There ain't but one thino 1 I know that '11 do it= 
 
 O 
 
 Anyhow, there ain't but one person." 
 
 " I can't think what you can mean ! " feebly 
 gasped Jane. 
 
 " She can," replied Lena tersely. Jane made* 
 a little inarticulate moan. Lena went on rapidly, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 375 
 
 " You go tell her. That 's what I corns for. No 
 thin' else nor nobody else can do it. That 's 
 your part of this infernal business. Mine 's done* 
 I 've give you the warnin'. Now you go ahead." 
 
 "Oh, are you sure?" repeated Jane weakly; 
 w is n't it possible you ' ve got it wrong, somehow ? " 
 
 " Is it possible the dust in the street don't hear 
 the oaths of Windover ! " exclaimed Lena scorn- 
 fully. " Do you s'pose there ain't a black deed 
 doin' or threatenin' in Angel Alley that / don't 
 know ? I tell you his life ain't worth a red herrin', 
 no, nor a bucketful of bait, if them fellars has 
 their way in this town ! . . . It 's the loss of the 
 license done it. It 's the last wave piled on. It 's 
 madded 'em to anything. It 's madded 'em to 
 murder. . . . Lord," muttered Lena, " if it come 
 to that, would n't I be even with 'em ! " 
 
 She grated her teeth, like an animal grinding a 
 bone ; took her foot from the painter, sprang into 
 the fishing-dory, and rowed with quick, powerful 
 strokes into the dark harbor. 
 
 Helen, without a moment's hesitation, descended 
 the cliff and peremptorily said : 
 
 "Jane, I heard it. Tell me all. Tell me 
 everything, this minute." 
 
 Jane who was sobbing bitterly, stopped like a 
 child at a firm word : and with more composure 
 than she had yet shown, she gave her version of 
 Lena's startling story. 
 
 Lena was right, she said ; the rum people were 
 v-ery angry with Mr. Bayard : he had got so many 
 
376 A SINGULAR LIFE, 
 
 shops shut up ; and other places ; he had shut up 
 so much in Angel Alley this year. And now old 
 Trawl had lost his license. Folks said a man 
 could n't make a decent living there any longer. 
 
 " That 's what Ben said," observed Jane, with r 
 feeble sense of the poignancy of the phrase. " A 
 man could n't make an honest living there, now. 
 But there 's one thing," added Jane with hang- 
 ing head. " Lena don't know it. I could n't tell 
 Lena. God have mercy on me, for it 's me that 
 helped it on ! " 
 
 " I do not understand you, Jane," replied Helen 
 coldly ; " how could you injure Mr. Bayard, or 
 have any connection with any plot to do him 
 harm?" 
 
 " I sent Ben off last Sunday night," said Jane 
 humbly. " I sent him marching for good. I told 
 him I never could marry him. I told him I 
 could n't stand it any longer. I told him what 
 I heard on Ragged Rock that night last 
 year." 
 
 " What did you hear on Ragged Rock?" asked 
 Helen, still distant and doubtful. 
 
 " Did n't the minister ever tell you ? " replied 
 Jane. " Then I won't." 
 
 " Very well," said Helen, after an agitated si 
 lence, " I shall not urge you. But if Mr. Bayard's 
 life is in real danger I cannot believe it ! " cried 
 the sheltered, happy woman. Such scenes, such 
 possibilities, belonged to the stage, to fiction ; not 
 to New England life. The Professor's daughter 
 
A SINGULAR LtFE. 377 
 
 jfiad a healthy antagonism in her to the excessive^ 
 the too dramatic. Her mind grasped the facts of 
 the situation so slowly that the Windover girl half 
 pitied her. 
 
 " You don't see," said Jane. " You don't under* 
 stand. You ain't brought up as we are." 
 
 " If Mr. Bayard is in danger " repeated Helen 
 " Jane ! " she cried sharply, thinking to test the 
 girl's sincerity and judgment, "should you have 
 come and told me what Lena said, if I had not 
 overheard it ? " 
 
 " Miss Carruth," answered Jane, with a dignity 
 of her own, " don't you know there is not one of 
 his people who would not do anything to save 
 Mr. Bayard?" 
 
 Through the dark Jane turned her little,pinched 
 face towards this fortunate woman, this other girl, 
 blessed and chosen. Her dumb eyes grew bright, 
 and flashed fire for that once ; then they smoul- 
 dered, and their spaniel look came on again. 
 
 " You ought to speak differently to me," she 
 said. " You should feel sorry for me ? because it 's 
 along of Ben. I tried to keep it up all this while* 
 I haven't dared to break with him, I thought if 
 I broke, and we 'd been keeping company so long, 
 maybe he might do a harm to Mr. Bayard. Then 
 it come to me that I couldn't, couldn't, could ' rit 
 bear it, not another time ! And I told him so* 
 And Ben, he swore an awful oath to me, and cleared 
 out. And then Lena came and told." 
 
 44 What was it Ben swore ? " asked Helen, whose 
 
378 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 sanguine heart was beginning to sink in earnest. 
 " This is no time for being womanly, and and 
 not saying things. If it takes all the oaths in the 
 catalogue of Angel Alley, it is my right to know 
 what he said, and it is your duty to tell me ! " 
 
 " Well," said Jane stolidly, " he said : ' Damn 
 him to hell ! If we ain't a-goin' to be married, he 
 shan't, neither ! ' " 
 
 " Thank you, Jane," said Helen gently, after a 
 long silence. She held out her hand; Jane took 
 it, but dropped it quickly. 
 
 "Do you know the details? The plan? The 
 plot if there is a plot ? " asked Helen, without 
 outward signs of agitation. 
 
 " Lena said they said Christlove should never 
 be dedicated," answered Jane drearily. " Not if 
 they had to put the parson out of the way to stop 
 it." 
 
 " Oh!" 
 
 " That 's what Lena said. She thought if Mr. 
 Bayard could be got out of town for a spell,, right 
 away, Lena thought maybe that would set *em off 
 the notion of it. I told her Mr. Bayard would n't 
 go. She said you 'd see to that." 
 
 " Yes," said Helen softly, " I will see to that." 
 
 Jane made no reply, but started unexpectedly to 
 her feet. The two girls clambered down from the 
 cliff in silence, and began to walk up the shore. 
 At the path leading to the hotel, Jane paused and 
 shrank away. 
 
 " How you cough ! " said Miss Carruth compas* 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 379 
 
 sionately. " You are quite wet with this heavy dew. 
 Do come into the cottage with me." 
 
 She put her hand affectionately on the damp 
 shoulder of Jane's blue and white calico blouse. 
 
 The hotel lights reached faintly after the figures 
 oi the two. Jane looked stunted and shrunken ; 
 Helen's superb proportions seemed to quench her. 
 The fisherman's daughter lifted her little homely 
 face. 
 
 "I don't suppose," she faltered, "you'd be will- 
 ing to be told. But mother and me have done for 
 him so long he ain't well, the minister ain't 
 there 's ways he likes his tea made, and we het the 
 bricks, come cold weather, for him and all 
 those little things. We 've tried to take good care 
 of Mr. Bayard ! It 's been a good many years ! " 
 said Jane piteously. It was more dreadful to her 
 to give up boarding the minister, than it was that 
 he should marry the summer lady in the gold and 
 purple gowns. 
 
 " 1 suppose you and he will go somewhere ? " 
 she added bitterly. 
 
 " We shan't forget you, Jane," said Helen 
 gently. 
 
 The calico blouse shoulder shook off the delicate 
 hand that rested upon it. 
 
 "I won't come in," she said. "I'll go right 
 3h3me." 
 
 Jane turned away, and walked across the cliffs. 
 The hotel lights fell short of her, and the darkness 
 swallowed her undersized, pathetic figure, as the 
 
380 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 mystery of life draws down the weak, the uncomely, 
 and the unloved. 
 
 Jane went home, and unlocked her bureau 
 drawer. From beneath the sachet-bag, on which 
 her little pile of six handkerchiefs rested precisely, 
 she drew out an old copy of Coleridge. The book 
 was scented with the sachet, and had a sickly per- 
 fume; it was incense to Jane. She turned the 
 leaves to find " Alph, the sacred river ; " then shut 
 the book, and put it back in the bureau drawer. 
 She did not touch it with her lips or cheek. She 
 handled it more tenderly than she did her Bible. 
 
 Left to herself, Helen felt the full force of the 
 situation fall upon her, in a turmoil of fear and 
 perplexity. The whole thing was so foreign to 
 her nature and to the experience of her protected 
 life, that it seemed to her more than incredible. 
 There were moments when she was in danger of 
 underrating the facts, and letting the chances 
 take their course it seemed to her so impossible 
 that Jane and Lena should not, somehow, be 
 mistaken. 
 
 Her mind was in a whirlwind of doubt and dis- 
 may. With a certain coolness in emergencies 
 characteristic of her, she tried to think the 
 position out, by herself. This futile process 
 occupied perhaps a couple of hours. 
 
 It was between eleven and twelve o'clock when 
 the Professor, with a start, laid down his manuscript 
 upon the Revised Version. For the door of the 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 381 
 
 clam study had opened quietly, and revealed his 
 daughter's agitated face. 
 
 " Papa," she said, " I am in a great trouble. I 
 have come to you first to know what to do 
 before I go to him. I've been thinking," she 
 added, " that perhaps this is one of the things that 
 fathers are for." 
 
 Like a little girl she dropped at his knee, and 
 told him the whole story. 
 
 " I could n't go to a man, and ask him to marry 
 me, without letting you know, Papa ! " said the 
 Professor's daughter. 
 
 The Professor of Theology reached for his 
 Charter Oak cane as a man gropes for a staff on 
 the edge of a precipice. The manuscript chapter 
 on the Authenticity of the Fourth Gospel fell to 
 the floor. The Professor and the cane paced the 
 clam study together feverishly. 
 
 The birds were singing when Helen and her 
 father stopped talking, and wearily stole back to 
 the cottage for an hour's rest. 
 
 " You could go right home," said the old man 
 gently. " The house is open, and the servants are 
 there. I am sure your mother will wish it, when- 
 ever she is acquainted with the facts." 
 
 " "We won't tell Mother, just yet, Papa not 
 till we must, you know. Perhaps Mr. Bayard 
 won't won't take me ! " 
 
 The Professor straightened himself, and looked 
 about with a guilty air. He felt as if he were 
 party to an elopement. Eager, ardent, boyishly 
 
382 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 sympathetic with Helen's position, quivering with 
 that perfect thoughtfulness which she never found 
 in any other than her father's heart, the Professor 
 of dogmatic Orthodox Theology flung himself into 
 the emergency as tenderly as if he had never 
 written a lecture on Foreordination, or preached 
 a sermon on the Inconceivability of Second Pro- 
 bation. 
 
 It was he, indeed, and none other, who summoned 
 Bayard to Helen's presence at an early hour of the 
 morning; and to the credit of the Department, 
 and of the ancient Seminary in whose stern faith 
 the kindest graces of character and the best 
 graciousness of manner have never been extin- 
 guished, be it said that Professor Haggai Carruth 
 did not once remind Emanuel Bayard that he was 
 meeting the consequences of unsoundness, and the 
 natural fate of heresy. Nobly sparing the young 
 man any reference to his undoubtedly deserved 
 misfortune, the Professor only said : 
 
 " Helen, here is Mr. Bayard," and softly shut 
 the door. 
 
 Helen's hearty color was quite gone. Such a 
 change had touched her, that Bayard uttered an 
 exclamation of horror, and took her impetuously 
 In his arms. 
 
 '''Love, what ails you?" he cried with quick 
 anxiety. 
 
 Arrived at the moment when she must speak, if 
 ever, Helen's courage and foresight failed hei 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. . 383 
 
 utterly. She found herself no nearer to knowing 
 what to say, or how to say it, than she had been at 
 the first moment when she heard the girls talking 
 on the rocks. To tell him her fears, and the 
 grounds for them, would be the fatal blunder, 
 How could she say to a man like Bayard : " Your 
 life is in danger. Come on a wedding-trip, and 
 save yourself ! " Yet how could she quibble, or 
 be dumb before the truth ! 
 
 Following no plan, or little, preacted part, but 
 only the moment's impulse of her love and her 
 trouble, Helen broke into girlish sobs, the first 
 that he had ever heard from her, and hid her wet 
 face against his cheek. 
 
 " Oh," she breathed, " I don't know how to tell 
 you ! But I am so unhappy and I have grown 
 so anxious about you! I don't see . . . how I 
 can bear it ... as we are." . . . 
 
 Her heart beat against his so wildly, that she 
 could have said no more if she had tried. But she 
 had no need to try. For he said : 
 
 " Would you marry me this summer, dear ? It 
 would make me very happy. ... I have not daied 
 to ask it." 
 
 " I would marry you to-morrow." Helen lifted 
 her head, and " shame departed, shamed " from her 
 sweet, wet face c " I would marry you to-day. I 
 want to be near you. I want ... if anything 
 whatever comes=" 
 
 "Whatever comes," he answered solemnly, "we 
 ought to be together now." 
 
384 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Thus they deceived each other neither own- 
 ing to the tender fault with the divine deceit of 
 love. 
 
 Helen comforted herself that she had not said 
 a word of threat or danger or escape, and that 
 Bayard suspected nothing of the cloudburst which 
 hung over him. He let her think so, smiling 
 tenderly. For he knew it all the time ; and more, 
 far more than Helen ever knew. 
 
XXVII. 
 
 THE Professor threw himself into the situation 
 with a fatherly tenderness which w6nt to Bayard's 
 heart ; but the theologian was disconcerted by this 
 glimpse into real life. He had been so occupied 
 with the misery of the next world that he had 
 never investigated the hell of this one. He was 
 greatly perplexed. 
 
 " As man to man, Bayard," he said, " you must 
 tell me the exact amount of truth in those womanly 
 alarms which agitate my daughter's heart, and to 
 which I allowed myself to yield without, perhaps, 
 sufficient reflection. I find it difficult to believe 
 that any harm can actually befall you in a New 
 England town. That Windover would really in- 
 jure you ? It seems to me, in cool blood, incredible." 
 
 " Windover would not," replied Bayard, smiling. 
 " They don't love me, but they don't mob a man 
 for that. Windover won't harm me, Did you 
 ever hear a phrase, common along the coast, here 
 Professor ' Rum done it ' ? " 
 
 The Cesarea Professor shook his head. " I am 
 not familiar with the phrase," he urged ; " it lacks 
 in grammar " 
 
 " What it gains in pith," interrupted Bayard ; 
 "but it sums up the situation. A business that 
 thrives on the ruin of men is not likely to be sen- 
 
386 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 sitive in the direction of inflicting unnecessary 
 suffering. I have successfully offended the liquor 
 interests of the whole vicinity. The new chapel 
 represents to them the growth of the onl} power 
 in this town which they have found reason tc fear, 
 That 's the amount of it." 
 
 "But the churches, Bayard the Christian 
 classes ? The ecclesiastical methods of restraining 
 vice?" 
 
 44 The ecclesiastical methods do not shut up the 
 saloons," said Bayard gently. " Angel Alley is 
 not afraid of the churches." 
 
 44 1 am not familiar with the literature of the 
 temperance movement," observed the Professor 
 helplessly. " It is a foreign subject to me. I am 
 not prepared to argue with you." 
 
 44 You will find some of it on my library shelves," 
 said Bayard ; 44 it might interest you some time to 
 glance at it." 
 
 44 When my manuscript on the New Version is 
 completed, I shall take pleasure in doing so," re- 
 pied the Professor politely ; 44 but the point now is, 
 just what, and how much do you fear from the 
 state of things to which you refer? Helen is a level- 
 headed girl. I take it for granted that she has not 
 wrought herself into a hysterical fright without 
 basi ;. I have acted on my knowledge of my 
 daughter's nature. I understand that^ if I am un 
 instructed in the temperance agitation." 
 
 44 Helen has not been misinformed, nor has she 
 ovei estimated anything," returned Bayard quietly, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 387 
 
 u Is it a mob you fear ? " 
 
 " Possibly ; but probably nothing of the kind. 
 My chief danger is one from which it is impossible 
 to escape." 
 
 " And that is?" 
 
 " Something underhanded. There is a personal 
 element in it." 
 
 Bayard rose, as if he would bring the con versa 
 tion to a cheek. 
 
 " There is nothing to be done," he said, " nothing 
 whatever. Everything shall go on, precisely as it 
 is arranged. I shall not run from them." 
 
 " You do not think wise to defer the dedication 
 for a time ? " 
 
 " Not an hour ! The dedication will take place 
 a week from Sunday." 
 
 The Professor was silent. He found it a little 
 difficult to follow the working of this young man's 
 mind. 
 
 " And yet," he suggested anxiously, " after the 
 marriage to-morrow you will take the tempo- 
 rary absence, the little vacation which your friends 
 advise? You will not think better of that, I hope, 
 for Helen's sake ? " 
 
 " I shall leave Windover for a week, for Helen's 
 sake, ' replied Bayard gravely. 
 
 In his heart he thought that it would make but 
 little difference ; but she should have it to remem- 
 ber that everything had been done. He would not 
 be foolhardy or obstinate. The sacred rights of 
 the wife over the man hail set in upon his life 
 
388 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 She should be gratified and comforted in every 
 way left to the power of that love and tenderness 
 which God has set in the soul abreast of duty and 
 honor. He would give the agitation in Angel 
 Alley time to cool, if cool it could. He would give 
 himself oh, he would give himself 
 
 Helen, in the next room, sat waiting for him 
 She ran her fingers over the keys of the piano ; her 
 foot was on the soft pedal ; she sang beneath her 
 breath, 
 
 " Komm "begliicke mich ? 
 . . . Begliicke mich 1 " 
 
 Bayard sought her in a great silence. He lifted 
 her tender face, and looked down upon it with that 
 quiver on the lower part of his own which she 
 knew so well; which always meant emotion that 
 he did not share with her. She did not trouble 
 him to try to have it otherwise. She clung to 
 him, and they clasped more solemnly than passion- 
 ately. 
 
 Around the bridegroom's look in Bayard's face, 
 the magic circle of the seer's loneliness was faintly 
 drawn. 
 
 If God and love had collided but, thank God ! 
 He and Love were one. 
 
 " Lord, I have groped after Thee, and to know 
 Thy will, and to do it if I could. I never expected 
 to be happy. Dost Thou mean this draught of 
 tinman joy for me ? " 
 
 So prayed Bayard, while her bright head lay 
 upon his breast with the delicate and gentle sur- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 389 
 
 render of the girl who will be wife before another 
 sun goes down. 
 
 Out upon the piazza of the Flying Jib the Pro- 
 fessor was entertaining visitors, by whose call 
 the lovers were not disturbed. The Reverend 
 George Fenton had unexpectedly and vaguely ap- 
 peared upon the scene. He was accompanied by 
 a lean, thoughtful man, with clerical elbows and 
 long, rustic legs i being no other than Toinpkinton 
 of Cesarea and the army cape. Professor Car- 
 ruth had taken his two old students into the 
 confidence of the family crisis. The Reverend 
 Mr. Fenton looked troubled. 
 
 " I had a feeling that something was wrong. I 
 have been impressed for days with a sense that 
 I ought to see Bayard to help him, you know 
 to offer him any assistance in my power. He 
 is in such a singular position ! He leads such 
 a singular life, Professor ! It is hard for a man 
 situated as I am, to know precisely what to do." 
 
 " The only thing that can be done for him, just 
 now, that I see,"' suggested the Professor dryly, 
 "is to find him a supply for Sunday. His mar- 
 riage to my daughter will, of necessity, involve a 
 short absence from his missionary duties." 
 
 " I wish I could preach for him ! " cried Fenton 
 eagerly. " I should like nothing better. I should 
 love to do so much for him. He never has any 
 supplies or vacations, like the rest of us. Now I 
 think of it, nobody has been near his pulpit for 
 three years, to help him out I mean nobody 
 
390 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 whom we should recognize. I Ve half a mind to 
 consult my committee. The First Church " 
 
 "/ will preach for Bayard," interrupted Tomp 
 kinton with his old. slow manner. " My church k 
 so small we are not important across the Cape 
 ther^ it is not necessary for me to consult my 
 committee. I will preach for him with all my 
 heart ; in the evening at all events all day, if 
 the Professor here will find me a supply of some 
 sort." 
 
 "Thank you, gentlemen," observed the Profes- 
 sor quietly ; " I will accept your offer, Tompkinton, 
 for the evening. I shall myself occupy Mr. Bay- 
 ard's pulpit in Windover town hall on Sunday 
 morning." 
 
 "You, Professor?" 
 
 Fenton turned pale. Tompkinton gave that little 
 lurch to his shoulders with which, for so many 
 years, he had jerked on the army cape in cold 
 weather. Tompkinton was well dressed, now, well 
 settled, well to do, but the same simple, manly 
 fellow. There was the gentleman in this grandson 
 of the soil, this educated farmer's boy; and an 
 instinct as true as the spirit of the faith which he 
 preached in the old, unnoticed ways, and with the 
 old, unobserved results. Tompkinton spent his life 
 in conducting weekly prayer meetings, in com- 
 forting old people in trouble, and in preaching 
 what he had been taught, as he had been taught it. 
 But he was neither a coward nor a cad for that. 
 
 " If I had had a little time to think of this," 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 391 
 
 protested Fenton. " My committee are, to a man, 
 opposed to this temperance movement, and our re- 
 lation to Bayard is, of course, you must see, 
 Professor, peculiar ! But perhaps " 
 
 " Oh, Tompkinton and I can manage," replied 
 the Professor, not without a twinkle in his deep 
 eyes. " I don't suppose the First Church has 
 ever heard of us, but we will do our humble 
 best." 
 
 Now, as the event fell out, the Professor and 
 Tompkinton changed their programme a little; 
 and when the time came to do Bayard this frater- 
 nal service, the first of its kind ever offered to 
 him by the clergymen of the denomination in 
 which he was reared, the Professor drove across 
 the Cape in the hot sun, ten miles, to fill the 
 Reverend Mr. Tompkinton's little, country pulpit, 
 and Tompkinton took the morning service for his 
 classmate. 
 
 In the evening the Professor of Theology from 
 Cesarea Seminary occupied the desk of the heretic 
 preacher in Windover town hall. The hall was 
 thronged. George Fenton preached to yawning 
 pews ; for the First Church, out of sheer, unsanc- 
 tified curiosity, lurched over, and sixty of them 
 went to hear the distinguished Professor. Bayard's 
 own people were present in the usual summer 
 evening force and character. 
 
 The Professor of Theology looked uncomfort- 
 ably at the massed and growing audience. He 
 was sixty-eight years old, and in all his scholarly 
 
392 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 and Christian life he had never stood before an 
 audience like this. He opened his manuscript 
 sermon, he had selected a doctrinal sermon upon 
 the Nature of the Trinity, and began to read i x 
 with his own distinguished manner. 
 
 The audience, restrained at first by the men 
 effect of good elocution and a cultivated voice 
 were respectful for awhile ; they listened hope 
 fully ; then perplexedly ; then dully. Sentence 
 after sentence, polished, and sound as the founda 
 tions of Galilee or Damascus Hall, fell softly from 
 the lips of the Cesarea Professor upon the ears of 
 the Windover fishermen. Doctrine upon doctrine 
 attacked them, and they knew it not. Proof-text 
 upon proof-text bombarded them in vain. 
 
 The Professor saw the faces of his audience 
 lengthen and fall ; across the rude, red brows of 
 the foreign sailors wonder flitted ; then confusion ; 
 then dismay. Drunkards and reformed men and 
 wretched girls, and the homeless, wretched people 
 of a seaport town, stood packed in rows before 
 the Professor of Theology, and gaped upon him. 
 Restlessness struck them, and began to run from 
 man to man. 
 
 " Shut up there ! " whispered Job Slip, punch- 
 ing a big Swede. " Be quiet, can't ye, for com- 
 mon manners ! You '11 disgrace Mr. Bayard ! " 
 
 "Be civil to the old cove, for the parson's 
 sake ! " commanded Captain Hap, hitting a Finn, 
 and stepping on the toes of a Windover seiner, 
 who had presumed to snicker. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 393 
 
 "Why don't he talk English then?*' protested 
 the fisherman. 
 
 A dozen men turned and left the hall. Half a 
 dozen followed. Some girls giggled audibly. A 
 group of Norwegians significantly shuffled their 
 feet on the bare floor. 
 
 The Professor of Theology laid down his manu- 
 script. It occurred to him, at last, that his audi- 
 ence did not understand what he was saying. It 
 was a dreadful moment. For the first time in his 
 honored life he had encountered the disrespect of 
 a congregation which he could not command. He 
 laid down his sermon on the Nature of the Trinity, 
 and looked the house over. 
 
 " I am afraid," he said distinctly, " that I am not 
 retaining the interest of this congregation. I am 
 not accustomed to your needs, or to the manner in 
 which your pastor presents the Truth to you. But 
 for his sake, you will listen to me, I am sure." 
 
 " Lord, yes," said the seiner in an audible whis- 
 per ; " we 'd listen to Bunker Hill Monyment for 
 him: 9 
 
 This irreverence did not, happily, reach the 
 ears of the Professor of Theology, who, with his 
 famous ease of manner, proceeded to say : 
 
 " My discourse is on the Nature of the Trinity ; 
 and I perceive that my thoughts on this subject 
 are not your thoughts, and that my ways of ex- 
 pression are not your ways, and that an inter pretei* 
 is needed between this preacher and his audience. 
 ... I have been thinking, since I stood at this 
 
394 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 desk, about the name which you give to the beau- 
 tiful new chapel which your pastor will dedicate 
 for you, God willing, next Sunday " 
 
 From a remote corner of the hall a sound like 
 that of a serpent arose, and fell. The Professor- 
 did not or would not hear it (no man could say 
 which), and went firmly on. 
 
 " Christlove you call your chapel, I am told. 
 You may be surprised to know it, but the fact is that 
 the sermon which I have been preaching to you, 
 and the thing which the tender and solemn name 
 of your chapel signifies, are one and the same." 
 
 " I don't see how he figgers that," muttered the 
 seiner. 
 
 "I will try to show you how," continued the 
 Professor, as if he had heard the fisherman. 
 
 He abandoned his manuscript on the Trinity, 
 and plunged headlong not in the least knowing 
 how he was to get out again into a short extem- 
 pore talk upon the life of Christ. The fishermen 
 listened, for the old preacher held to it till they 
 d'd ; and as soon as he had commanded their 
 respect and attention, he wisely stopped. The 
 service came to a sudden but successful end ; and 
 the exhausted Professor thoughtfully retired from 
 his first, his last, his only experience in the pulpit 
 of the Unsound. The most depressing part of the 
 occasion was that his wife told him it was the best 
 sermon she had heard him preach in thirty years. 
 
 But Bayard and Helen knew these things not, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 395 
 
 nor thought of them. They had been married, as 
 it was decided, upon that Saturday, the day before. 
 Helen's father married them. There was no wed- 
 ding party, no preparation. Helen had a white 
 gown, never worn before ; Jane Granite sent some 
 of her mother's roses, and Mrs. Carruth, who 
 distinguished herself by abnormal self-possession, 
 fastened one of the roses at Helen's throat. It 
 was thought best that Windover should know 
 nothing of the marriage until the preacher and 
 his bride had left the town ; so it was the quietest 
 little wedding that love and the law allow. 
 
 And Bayard and Helen went to her old home 
 in the glory and the blossom of the Cesarea June. 
 And the great cross came out upon the Seminary 
 green, for the moon was up that week. 
 
 " It used to divide us," she whispered ; " it 
 never can again." 
 
 She wondered a little that he did not answer ; 
 but that he only held her solemnly, in the window 
 where they stood to see the cross. 
 
 Helen's happy nature was easily queen of her. 
 She had begun to feel that her anxiety for Bay- 
 ard's sake was overstrained. Tragic Windover 
 slipped from her consciousness, almost from her 
 memory. She felt the sacred right of human joy 
 to conquer fate, and trusted it as royally as she 
 had trusted him. In spite of himself, he absorbed 
 something of her warm and brilliant hopefulness. 
 When she gave herself, she gave her ease of heart. 
 And so the worn and worried man came to his Eden. 
 
XXVIII. 
 
 HELEN'S happy heart proved prophet ; so 
 said, and smiled. For there was no mob. Sunday 
 dawned like a dream. The sun rode up without 
 cloud or fire. The sea carried its cool, June colors. 
 The harbor wore her sweetest face. The summer 
 people, like figures on a gay Japanese fan, moved 
 brightly across the rocks and piers ; Bayard and 
 Helen looked out of the windows of the Flying Jib, 
 and watched them with that kindness of the heart 
 for the interests of strangers which belongs to joy 
 alone. A motionless fleet lay in the harbor, opening 
 its silvery wings to dry them in the Sunday sun. 
 
 The fishermen had hurried home by scores to 
 witness the dedication. Everybody had a smile 
 for the preacher's bride, the boarder on the 
 rocks, the fisherman from the docks. 
 
 Every^ child or woman to whom she had ever 
 done a kindness in her inexperienced, warm-hearted 
 fashion, remembered it and her that day. She 
 wore the unornamented cream-white silk dress in 
 which she had been married ; for Bayard asked it ; 
 
 "The people will like to see you so," he saidc 
 "It will give them a vision." 
 
 All the town was alive and alert. The argu- 
 ment of success, always the cogent one to the 
 average mind, was peculiarly effective in Windover, 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 397 
 
 People who had never given the mission a thought 
 before, and people who had given it many, but 
 never a kindly one, looked at the doors of the new 
 chapel, smothered in wild Cape roses for the 
 solemn gala, and said : " That affair in Angel 
 Alley seems to prosper, spite of everythingo 
 There may be something in it, after all." 
 
 It was expected that the churches themselves, 
 though reserved on the subject, would be better 
 represented at Christlove that evening, than they 
 eared to be ; for the young people were determined 
 to see the dedication, and would pair off in scores 
 to Angel Alley, leaving their elders behind, to 
 support the ecclesiastical foundations in decorum 
 and devotion, as by the creed and confession bound. 
 
 The attendance of other audiences was not en- 
 couraged, however, by the pastor in Angel Alley ; 
 his own would more than fill the chapel. All the 
 little preparations of the people went on quietly, 
 and he brought them, as it was his will to do, with- 
 out weariness or worry, to the evening. He 
 wished the dedication of his chapel to be free from 
 the fret and care which turn so many of our re- 
 ligious festivals into scrambles, I had almost 
 said, shambles, for the harm they do to exhausted 
 women, and to careworn men. 
 
 The day passed easily. Bayard himself, though 
 moving under deep excitement, gave no evidence 
 of it. He was as quiet as the Saint Michael in the 
 picture, whose foot was on the dragon, and whose 
 head was in the skies 
 
398 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 The day passed uneventfully. The evening was 
 one of Windover's fairest and most famous. The 
 sky gave the ethereal colors of transparent rose- 
 clouds, and the harbor returned them delicately. 
 There was a slight, watery line in the northwest, 
 but the oldest sailors scarcely noticed it. No- 
 thing had happened in any way to hinder the 
 movement of the ceremonial, or to mar its success. 
 There was no mob, nor threat of any. There was 
 no mass, no riot, no alarm. Angel Alley was dec- 
 orous if one might say so, obtrusively decorous. 
 Captain Hap, and Job Slip, the special police, and 
 the officers of the mission looked out of narrow 
 lids at Angel Alley, and watched guardedly. 
 
 Not a misdemeanor disturbed the calm of this, 
 to all appearance, now law-abiding nay, law- 
 adoring street. Saloon after saloon that Bayard 
 had closed presented locked front doors to the 
 thirstiest sailor who swaggered from the wharves in 
 search of what he might swallow. Nameless dens 
 that used to flourish the prosperity of their sicken- 
 ing trade were shut. 
 
 Old Trawl's door was barred. The Trawls 
 themselves were invisible. There would be no 
 mob. So said the treasurer of the chapel. So 
 said the Windover police. So thought the anxious 
 Professor, and his tearful wife. So said Helen, 
 sparkling with the pretty triumph of love and joy. 
 
 " Dear ! You see we were mistaken. They do 
 love you here, in rough old Win clover bless it, 
 after all ! We were too anxious I was worried ; 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 399 
 
 I own it, now. I was afraid because you were so 
 precious to me. And I could not be with you 
 ... if anything . . . went wrong. But now " 
 
 " Now," he said, u nothing can go wrong. For 
 you are mine, and I am yours, and this is forever.' r 
 
 " I am glad to hear you speak so cheerfully/' 
 she said, catching at the lighter note in the chord 
 of his words. 
 
 He did not answer her ; and when she looked 
 up, she was surprised at the solemn expression of 
 his face. 
 
 44 Love," he said, " it is time to go. Kiss me, 
 Helen, before we start." 
 
 They stood at the window in her own little room 
 in the summer cottage. 
 
 O 
 
 The tide was rising, and it gained quietly upon 
 the beaches and the pier. Bayard looked out upon 
 the sea, for a moment, out to the uttermost hori- 
 zon's purple curve. Then he took his wife to his 
 heart, and held her there ; within a clasp like that, 
 no woman speaks, and Helen did not. 
 
 The Professor and his wife passed down Angel 
 Alley. The Reverend Mr. Tompkinton and that 
 dear old moderator, the very Orthodox but most 
 Christian minister who had always done a brother's 
 deed by the heretic pastor when he could, followed 
 the great Professor. These officers of the evening's 
 ceremony entered the chapel, and not staying to 
 leave Mrs. Carruth in a front pew, but leading her 
 with them passed on to the platform. 
 
400 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Whispers buzzed about. 
 
 " The minister ! Where 's the minister ? Hag 
 anything happened to Mr. Bayard ? " 
 
 For the chapel was already full. Captain Hap 
 trotted impatiently down the aisle. Job Slip looked 
 at the policeman in the vestibule in a worried way 
 But the officer stolidly signaled that all was well ; 
 and Captain Hap and Job Slip and scores of 
 watchers breathed again. 
 
 Tha congregation increased quietly. Angel 
 Alley was unprecedentedly still. The audience 
 was serious and civil. All of Bayard's own people 
 were there many citizens of Windover and 
 the young folks from the churches, as expected. 
 
 Then, came the throng from the wharves. Then, 
 came the crowd from the streets. Then, came the 
 rough, red faces from foreign ports, and from the 
 high seas, and from the Grand Banks, and Georges'. 
 There came all the homeless, neglected, tossed, and 
 tempted people whom Bayard loved, and who loved 
 him. There came the outcast, and the forgotten, 
 and the unclean of heart and body. There came the 
 wretches whom no one else thought of, or cared 
 for. There came the poor girls who frequented 
 no other house of worship, but were always wel- 
 comed here. There came the common people, 
 who heard him gladly ; for to them he spoke, and 
 for them he lived. 
 
 The preacher walked down Angel Alley with 
 his wife, in her white dress, upon his arm. The 
 Alley was thronged with spectators who did not or 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 401 
 
 who could not enter the chapel. Two policemen 
 stepped forward to escort the minister, but he 
 waved them back. He and Helen walked quietly 
 to the chapel steps, and were about to enter, 
 when a slight disturbance in the crowd, at their 
 immediate side, caused Bayard to look around. A 
 girl was struggling with an officer, to get near 
 enough to speak to the minister. 
 
 " 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, 
 
402 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 decora- 
 tion chosen to welcome the June bride to Wind- 
 over the people's flower, the blossom of the rocks 
 and downs. 
 
 It was a pleasant chapel. The library, the gym- 
 nasium, the bowling-alley, opened from the prayer- 
 room. Pictures and books and games and loun- 
 ging-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. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 403 
 
 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 nei- 
 ther blushed nor paled, but had her sweet com= 
 posure. 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 know- 
 ing 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 audi- 
 ence that he had not allowed to conquer him last 
 Sunday, contributed his most distinguished man- 
 ner, his best good sense, and the least possible evi- 
 dence 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 for- 
 
404 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 gotten 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 Wind- 
 over 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 405 
 
 bitter years that he had toiled among them, he 
 said no word. He spoke of the kindness of Wind- 
 over, 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 w^iose 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 poor- 
 est, 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 
 
406 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 fight it till I go from you. For God has set me 
 among you, not to minister to your self-satisfac- 
 tion, 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 minis- 
 ter 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, seri- 
 ous 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 no 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 407 
 
 body 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 
 
408 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 noise- 
 lessly 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 evan- 
 gelical 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. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 409 
 
 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 struct 
 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 appear- 
 ance 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 itera- 
 tion : 
 
 " Police ! Help ! Murder ! Sergeant ! 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 411 
 
 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." 
 
412 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 '11 
 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 '11 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 com- 
 manded 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." 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 413 
 
 " 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 reputa- 
 tion, and so on." 
 
 Lena groaned. 
 
 " But I caught him by the arm ! I stood along- 
 side 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 extraor- 
 dinary 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 
 
414 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 carpen- 
 ter, 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 sur- 
 geon 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 com- 
 pany has cleared the track, and the motorman 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 whicn 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 trem- 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 415 
 
 bling, 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 
 clone 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, peer- 
 ing 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 thresh- 
 old 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 
 
416 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 5 
 "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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 417 
 
 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 in- 
 jured 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 with- 
 out 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 mo- 
 ments 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 
 
418 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 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 al 
 ready 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 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 419 
 
 meant the same thing after all," he whis- 
 pered. 
 
 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 suf- 
 fered 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. 
 
 She stooped and kissed him, but her lips took 
 the air from him, and he struggled for it, 
 
 " You poor, poor girl ! " he said. 
 
 The wind went down, and the tide went out. 
 The dawn came with the ebb. Bayard fell into a 
 sleep so gentle that Helen's heart leaped with hope. 
 She stole out into the study. Captain Hap was 
 there ; his shoes were off ; he stepped without noise. 
 The sunrise made a rose-light in the rooms. 
 
 " It is real sleep," breathed Helen. " Don't 
 wake him, Captain." 
 
 But when the old sailor-nurse would have taken 
 her place for the morning watch, she shook her 
 
420 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 head. She went back and lay down on the cot be- 
 side her husband; he moved his hand, as if he 
 groped for hers, and she was sorry that he had 
 missed it for a moment. 
 
 " It shall not happen again," she thought. 
 
 Then exhaustion and vigil overcame her, for she 
 had watched for many nights ; and thinking that 
 she waked, she slept. 
 
 When she came to herself it was broad, bright 
 day. Her hand had a strange feeling ; when she 
 tried, she could not move it, for he held it fast. 
 There were people in the room, her father, her 
 mother, Captain Hap. She stirred a little, lean- 
 ing towards her husband's pillow. 
 
 " Dear, are you better this morning ? " 
 
 But some one came up, and gently laid a hand 
 upon her eyes. 
 
XXX. 
 
 JOB SLIP went down to the water, and it was 
 dark. He walked apart, and took himself into that 
 solitary place on the wharves which he remem- 
 bered, where he had knelt in the rain, one night, 
 and said, " God," for Mr. Bayard. 
 
 A mackerel keg was there the same one, per- 
 haps ; he overturned it, and sat down, and tried to 
 understand. Job had not been able to under- 
 stand since Mr. Bayard was hurt. 
 
 Thought came to him slowly, and with pain like 
 that caused by the return of congested blood to 
 its channels. 
 
 " He is dead," said Job. " Lord A'mighty, he 
 ain't alive. Seems I could n't get it into my head. 
 They 've killed him. He 's goin' to be buried." 
 
 Job clenched his gnarled hands together, and 
 shook them at the sky ; then they dropped. 
 
 " Seems like shakin' fists at him" thought Job. 
 " I ain't a-goin' to. S'posen he 's up yander. 
 That 's the idee. Lord A'mighty, what do you 
 mean by it ? You did n't stop to think of us 
 reformed men, did you, when you let this hap- 
 pen? . . . For Christ's sake, Amen," added Job, 
 under the impression that he had been giving utter* 
 ance to a prayer. 
 
422 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 " Mr. Bayard ? " called Job aloud. He slipped 
 off the keg and got upon his knees. As he 
 changed his position, the fisherman vaguely 
 noticed the headlight of the schooner on which he 
 was to have taken his trip, that night. " There 
 goes the Tilly E. Salt," said Job, interrupting 
 himself ; " she 's got to weigh without me, this 
 time. I 'm guard of honor for the the I 
 can't say it ! " groaned Job. " It 's oncredible him 
 bein' in a him put in a Lord, he 's the 
 livin'est man I ever set my eyes on ; he CAN'T die ! 
 . . . Mr. Bayard ? Mr. Bayard, sir?" 
 
 Job paused, as if he expected to be answered. 
 The water dashed loudly against the old pier. 
 The distant cry of the buoy came over the harbor. 
 The splash of retreating oars sounded faintly 
 somewhere, through the dark. 
 
 " He 's livin' along," said Job, after some 
 thought. " He can't get fur out of Angel Alley. 
 He would n't be happy. He 'd miss us, some- 
 ways ; he 's so used to us ; he 's hoverin' in them 
 hymn-toons and that gymnasium he set so much 
 by. I '11 bet he is. He 's lingerin' in us poor 
 devils he 's spent three year makin' men of ... 
 He 's a-livin' here" 
 
 Job struck his own broad breast, and then he 
 struck it again. A shudder passed over his big 
 frame ; and then came the storm. He had not wept 
 before, since Mr. Bayard died. The paroxysm 
 wearied and weakened him, and it was the piteous 
 fact that these were the next words which passed 
 the lips of the half-healed drunkard. 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 423 
 
 " God A'mighty, if I only had a drink ! " 
 
 Two hours afterwards, Job Slip came up the 
 wharves ; he came as he went, alone ; he walked 
 with a steady step ; he held his head high in the 
 dark. He whispered as he walked : 
 
 " I did n't no, I did n't do it. ... Bein ? left 
 so I 've alwers had you, sir, before, you know. 
 It makes a sight o' difference when a man hain't 
 anybody but God. He 's a kinder stranger. I 
 did n't know, one spell there but I was goin' 
 under. . . . You won't desert a fellar, will you - 
 yander ? I '11 do you credit, sir, see if I don't. 
 I won't disgrace you, d if I will ! " 
 
 At that moment Job shied suddenly, like a 
 horse, clear from one side of the wharf to the 
 other. He cried aloud, 
 
 " Why, why, what 's here ? "What 's got me ? " 
 
 Fingers touched him, but they were of flesh; 
 little fingers, but they were warm, and curled con- 
 fidingly in Job's big hand. 
 
 " Joey ? You ? Little Joey ! Why, father's 
 sonny boy ! You come just in the right time, Joey. 
 I was kinder lonesome. I miss the minister. I 
 ain't just feeliii' right." 
 
 " Fa ther," said Joey pleasantly ; " Marm said 
 to find you, for she said she fought you 'd need 
 you little boy." 
 
 " And so I do, my son, and so I do ! " cried 
 Job. 
 
 With Joey's little fingers clasped in his, Job 
 
424 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 walked up Angel Alley, past the doors of the dens 
 that were closed, and the doors that were open 
 still ; and if the ghost of the dear, dead minister 
 had swept visibly before Job and Joey, no man 
 could have tempted or disturbed them less. 
 
 In his own chapel, in Angel Alley, Bayard lay 
 in state. It was such state as the kings of the 
 earth might envy, and its warriors and its states- 
 men and its poets do not know. It was said that 
 his was the happiest dead face that ever rebuked 
 the sadness of the living ; and the fairest that they 
 who wept for him had ever seen. Death had not 
 marred his noble beauty; and in death or life 
 there was no comelier man. All the city thronged 
 to show him reverence who had lived among them 
 baffled, doubted, and sick at heart; and it ap- 
 peared that those who had done the least for him 
 then, would have done most for him now : the 
 people of ease ; the imitators ; the conformers, and 
 the church members who never questioned their 
 own creeds or methods ; the summer strangers 
 playing at life upon the harbor coast, and visitors 
 from a distance where the preacher had his fame. 
 
 But when these superior and respectable per- 
 sons crowded to give their tardy tribute to him, 
 they were told that there was no room for them in 
 the chapel ; nay, they could scarcely find footing 
 in the dust of Angel Alley. For they were held 
 back by the sacred rights of " nearest mourners " ; 
 and Bayard's mourners claimed him. It was said 
 
A SINGULAR LIFE. 425 
 
 that hundreds of sunburnt men had stood waiting 
 in the street since midnight for the opening of the 
 doors, and the chance to enter. Then, there had 
 passed up the steps of Christlove Chapel the 
 great mass of the neglected and the poor, the 
 simple and the sodden and the heart-broken, and 
 those who had no friends but only that one man ; 
 and God had taken him. The fishermen of Wind- 
 over, and the poor girls, the widows of Windover, 
 and her orphaned children, the homeless, foreign 
 sailors, and the discontented laborers from the 
 wharves poured in ; and the press was great. 
 
 He lay among them regally, wrapped in his 
 purple pall. And he and Helen knew that her 
 bridal roses withered forever out of mortal sight 
 upon his breast. But she had given him up at this 
 last hour to his people ; he was theirs, and they 
 were his, and what they willed they did for him, 
 and she did not gainsay them. They covered him 
 with their wild flowers, after the fashion of the 
 Cape ; and clumsy sailors brought big, hothouse 
 bouquets flaring on wires and splashed with tears, 
 " to give the minister." And his dead heart, like 
 his living one, was found large enough to hold 
 them all. 
 
 One poor girl brought no flowers to Bayard's 
 burial. Lena brought only sobs instead, and 
 watered his pall with her tears, and hid her face s 
 and passed on, with her hands before it. 
 
 Now, around the bier there stood a guard of 
 honor strange to see ; for it was chosen from the 
 
426 A SINGULAR LIFE. 
 
 Windover drunkards whom the pastor had saved 
 and cured. Among them, Job Slip stood proudly in 
 command at the minister's head : the piteous type 
 of all that misery which Bayard had died to 
 lessen, and of that forgotten manliness which he 
 had lived to save. 
 
 There was no dirge sung at Christlove Chapel 
 when he was borne from it. A girl's voice from a 
 darkened corner of the gallery started " the minis- 
 ter's hymn," but trembled, and broke quite down. 
 So the fishermen took it up, and tried to sing, 
 
 " I need thee every hour." 
 
 But they, too, faltered, for they needed him too 
 much ; and in silence, trying not to sob, with bared, 
 bowed heads they passed out gently (for his spirit 
 was upon them), thinking to be better men. 
 
 One of the summer people, a stranger in the 
 town, strolling on the beach that day, was attracted 
 by an unusual and impressive sight upon the water, 
 and asked what that extraordinary display of the 
 signs of public mourning meant. 
 
 An Italian standing by, made answer, 
 
 " The Christman is dead." 
 
 He tried to explain further, but choked, and 
 pointed seaward, and turned away. 
 
 For, from every main in the harbor, as far as 
 eye could see, the flags of Windover floated 
 at half-mast. The fishermen had done him this 
 honor, reserved only for the great of the earth, 
 and for their own dead mates ; and most sacred 
 for these last. 
 
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