From the glory of the festivals of alliance Jim Dyckman and Charity Coe were absent. Both were so eager to be abroad in the battle that they did not miss the flag-waving. But they wanted to cross the sea together. The importance of this ambition tempted Charity to a desperate conclusion that the formalities of her union with Jim did not matter so long as they were together. Yet the risk of death was so inescapable and she was so imbued with churchliness that her dreams were filled with visions of herself dead and buried in unhallowed ground, of herself and Jim standing at heaven's gate and turned away for lack of a blessing on their union.

Her soul was about ready to break completely, but her body gave out first. It was in a small town in New Jersey that they found themselves weather-bound.

The sky seemed to rain ice-water and they took refuge in the village's one hotel, a dismal place near the freight-station. The entrance was up a narrow staircase, past a bar-room door.

The rooms were ill furnished and ill kept, and the noise of screaming locomotives and jangling freight-cars was incessant. But there was no other hospitality to be had in the town.

Jim left Charity at her door and begged her to sleep. Her dull eyes and doddering head promised for her.

He went to his own room and laughed at the cheap wretchedness of it: the cracked pitcher in the cracked bowl, the washstand whose lower door would not stay open, the two yellow towels in the rack, the bureau, the cane chairs, and the iron bed with its thin mattress and neglected drapery.

He lowered himself into a rickety rocker and looked out through the dirtier window at the dirty town. The only place to go was to sleep, and he tried to make the journey. But a ferocious resentment at the idiocy of things drove away repose.

He resolved that he had been a fool long enough. He would give up the vain effort to conform, and would take Charity without sanction. He was impatient to go to her then and there, but he dared not approach her till she had rested.

He remembered a book he had picked up at one of their villages of denial. It was one of those numberless books everybody is supposed to have read. For that reason he had found it almost impossible to begin. But he was desperate enough to read even a classic. He hoped that it would be a soporific. That was his definition of a classic.

The book was the Reverend Charles Kingsley's Hypatia. Jim was down on the Episcopal clergy one and all, and he read with prejudice, skipping the preface, of course, which set forth the unusual impulse of a churchman to help the Church of his own day by pointing out the crimes and errors of the Church of an earlier day; a too, too rare appeal to truth for the sake of salvation by the way of truth.

As Jim glanced angrily through the early pages, the pictures of life in the fifth century caught and quickened his gritty eyes. He skimmed the passages that did not hold him, but as the hours went on he grew more unable to let go.

The sacred lunch hour passed by ignored. The rain beat down on the roof as the words rained up from the page. The character of that eminently wise and beautiful and good Hypatia seemed to be Charity in ancient costume. The hostility of the grimy churchmen of that day infuriated him. He cursed and growled as he read.

The persecution of Hypatia wrought him to such wrath that he wanted to turn back the centuries and go to her defense. He breathed hard as he came to the last of the book and read of the lynching of Hypatia, the attack of the Christians upon her chariot, the dragging of her exquisite body through the streets, and even into the church, and up to the altar, up to the foot of “the colossal Christ watching unmoved from off the wall, his right hand raised to give a blessing—or a curse?”

Jim panted as Philammon did, tracing her through the streets by the fragments of her torn robes and fighting through the mob in vain to reach her and shield her. He became Philammon and saw not words on a page, but a tragedy that lived again.

She shook herself free from her tormentors, and, springing back, rose for one moment to her full height, naked, snow-white against the dusky mass around—shame and indignation in those wide clear eyes, but not a stain of fear. With one hand she clasped her golden locks around her; the other long white arm was stretched upward toward the great still Christ, appealing—and who dare say, in vain?—from man to God.

Her lips were opened to speak; but the words that should have come from them reached God's ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again ... and then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted roofs and thrilled like the trumpet of avenging angels through Philammon's ears.

Crushed against a pillar, unable to move in the dense mass, he pressed his hands over his ears. He could not shut out those shrieks! When would they end? What in the name of the God of mercy were they doing? Tearing her piecemeal? Yes, and worse than that. And still the shrieks rang on, and still the great Christ looked down on Philammon with that calm, intolerable eye, and would not turn away. And over His head was written in the rainbow, “I am the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever!” The same as He was in Judea of old, Philammon? Then what are these, and in whose temple? And he covered his face with his hands, and longed to die.

It was over. The shrieks had died away into moans; the moans to silence. How long had he been there? An hour, or an eternity? Thank God it was over! For her sake—but for theirs?

Startled by the vividness of the murder, Jim looked up from the book, thinking that he had heard indeed the shrieks of Charity in a death-agony. The walls seemed to quiver still with their reverberation.

He put down the book in terror and saw where he was. It was like waking from a nightmare. He was glad to find that he was not in a temple of ancient Alexandria, but in even that dingy New Jersey inn.

He wondered if Charity had not died. He hesitated to go to her door and knock. She needed sleep so much that he hardly dared to risk waking her, even to assure himself that she was alive.

He went to the window and saw two men under umbrellas talking in the yard between the hotel wings. They would not have been laughing as they were if they had heard shrieks.

His eye was caught by a window opposite his. There sat Charity in a heavy bath-robe; her hair was down; she had evidently dropped into the chair by the open window and fallen asleep.

Jim stared at her and was reminded of how he had stared at Kedzie on his other wedding journey. Only, Kedzie had been his bride, and Charity was not yet, and might never be. Kedzie was girlish against an auroral sky; she was rather illumined than dressed in silk. Charity was a heart-sick woman, driven and fagged, and swaddled now in a heavy woolen blanket of great bunches and wrinkles. Kedzie was new and pink and fresh as any dew-dotted morning-glory that ever sounded its little bugle-note of fragrance. Charity was an old sweetheart, worn, drooping, wilted as a broken rose left to parch with thirst.

Yet it was Charity that made his heart race with love and desire and determination. She was Hypatia to him and he vowed that the churchmen should not deny her nor destroy her. He clenched his fists with resolution, then went back to his book and finished it. He loved it so well that he forgave the Church and the clergy somewhat for the sake of this clergyman who had spoken so sturdily for truth and beauty and mercy. He loved the book so well that he even read the preface and learned that Hypatia really lived once and was virtuous, though pagan, and was stripped and slain at the Christian altar, chopped and mutilated with oyster shells in a literal ostracism, her bones burned and her ashes flung into the sea.

The lesson Kingsley drew from her fate was that the Church was fatally wrong to sanction “those habits of doing evil that good may come, of pious intrigue, and at last of open persecution, which are certain to creep in wheresoever men attempt to set up a merely religious empire, independent of human relationships and civil laws.” The preacher-novelist warned the Church of now that the same old sins of then were still at work.

Jim closed the book and returned to the window to study Charity. He vowed that he would protect her from that ostracism. His wealth was but a broken sword, but it should save her.

He felt it childish of her to be so set upon a wedding at the hands of one of the clergymen who stoned her, but he liked her better for finding something childish and stubborn in her. She was so good, so wise, so noble, so all-for-others, that she needed a bit of obstinate foolishness to keep her from being absolute marble.

He put on his hat and his raincoat and went out into the town, hunting a clergyman, resolved to compel him at all costs. The sudden shower became lyrical to his mood as a railroad train clicks to the mood of the passenger.

There was but one Episcopal church in the village and the parsonage was a doleful little cottage against a shabby temple. The hotelkeeper had told him how to find it, and the name of the parson.

Jim tapped piously on the door, then knocked, then pounded. At length a voice came to him from somewhere, calling:

“Come into the church!”

“That's what I've been trying to do for weeks,” Jim growled. He went into the church and found the parson in his shirt-sleeves. He had been setting dishpans and wash-tubs and pails under the various jets of water that came in through the patched roof in unwelcome libations.

His sleeves were rolled up and he was rolling up pew cushions. He gave Jim a wet hand and peered at him curiously. It relieved Jim not to be recognized and regarded as a visiting demon.

The clergyman's high black waistcoat was frayed and shiny, as well as wet, and his reverted collar had an evident edge from the way the preacher kept moistening his finger and running it along the rim. In spite of this worse than a hair-shirt martyrdom, the parson seemed to be a mild and pitiful soul, and Jim felt hopeful of him as he began:

“I must apologize, Mr. Rutledge, for intruding on you, but I—well, I've got more money than I need and I imagine you've got less. I want to give you a little of mine for your own use. Is there any place you could put ten thousand dollars where it would do some good?”

Young Mr. Rutledge felt for a moment that he was dreaming or delirious. He made Jim repeat his speech; then he stammered:

“Oh, my dear sir! The wants of this parish! and my poor chapel! You can see the state of the roof, and the broken windows. The people are too poor to pay for repairs. My own pittance is far in arrears, but I can't complain of that since so many of my dear flock are in need. I was just about persuaded that we should have to abandon the fight to keep the church alive. I had not counted on miracles, but it seems that they do occur.”

“Well, I'm not exactly a miracle-worker, but I've got some money you can have if—there's a string to it, of course. But you could use ten thousand dollars, couldn't you?”

“Indeed not,” said Mr. Rutledge, feeling as Faust must have felt when Mephisto began to promise things. A spurt of water from a new leak brought him back from the Middle Ages and he cried: “You might lend a hand with this tub, sir, if you will.”

When the new cascade was provided for, Jim renewed his bids for the preacher's soul:

“If you can't use ten thousand, how much could you use?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, you could use a new roof at least. I'll give you a new roof, and a real stained-glass window of Charity to replace that broken imitation atrocity, and a new organ and hymn-books, and new pew covers, and I'll pay your arrears of salary and guarantee your future, and I'll give you an unlimited drawing account for your poor, and—any other little things you may think of.”

Mr. Rutledge protested:

“It's rather cruel of you, sir, to make such jokes at such a time.”

“God bless you, old man! I never was so much in earnest. It's easy for me to do those little trifles.”

“Then you must be an angel straight from heaven.”

“I'm an angel, they tell me, but from the opposite direction. It's plain you don't know who I am. Sit down and I'll tell you the story of my life.”

So the little clergyman in his shirt-sleeves sat shivering with incipient pneumonia and beatitude, and by his side in the damp pew in the dark chapel Jim sat in his raincoat and unloaded his message.

The Reverend Mr. Rutledge had heard of Jim and of Charity, and had regretted the assault of their moneyed determination on the bulwarks of his faith. But somehow as he heard Jim talk he found him simple, honest, forlorn, despised and rejected, and in desperate necessity.

He looked at his miserable church and thought of his flock. Jim's money would put shingles on the rafters and music in the hymns and food in the hungry. It became a largess from heaven.

He could see nothing, hear nothing, but a call to accept. He asked for a moment to consider. He retired to pray.

His prayer was interrupted by one of his hungriest parishioners, a Mrs. McGillicuddy, one of those poor old washerwomen whose woes pile up till they are almost laughable to a less humorous heart than the little preacher's. He asked her to wait and returned to his prayers.

His sheep seemed to gather about their shepherd and bleat for pasture and shelter. They answered his prayer for him. He came back and said:

“I will.”

“I do,” was what Jim and Charity said a little later when Jim had wrested Charity from her sleep by pounding at her door. He waited, frantically, while she dressed. And he had the town's one hack at the door below. He was afraid that the parson would change his mind before they could get the all-important words out of him.

They rode through the rain like Heine's couple in the old stage-coach, with Cupid, the blind passenger, between them. They ran into the church under the last bucketfuls of shower. Jim produced the license he had carried so long in vain. The washerwoman consented to be one witness; the sexton-janitor made the other.

Jim had the ring ready, too. He had carried it long enough. It made a little smoldering glimmer in the dusk church. He knelt by Charity during the prayer, and helped her to her feet, and the little clergyman kissed her with fearsome lips. Jim nearly kissed him himself.

He did hug Mrs. McGillicuddy, and pressed into her hand a bill that she thought was a dollar and blessed him for. When she got home and found what it was she almost fainted into one of her own tubs.

Jim left a signed check for the minister, with the sumlines blank, and begged him not to be a miser. They left with him a great doubt as to what the Church would do to him for doing what he had done for his chapel. But he was as near to a perfection of happiness as he was likely ever to be.

His future woes were for him, as Charity's and Jim's were for them. They would be sufficient to their several days; but for this black rainy night there were no sorrows.

It was too late to get back to the city and luxury—and notoriety. They stayed where they were and were glad enough. They expected to fare worse on the battle-front in France where they would spend their honeymoon.

There was some hesitation as to which of their two rooms at the hotel was the less incommodious, but the furniture had been magically changed. Everything was velvet and silk; what had been barrenness was a noble simplicity; what had been dingy was glamorous.

The ghastly dinner sent up from the dining-room was a great banquet, and the locomotive whistles and the thunderous freight-cars were epithalamial flutes and drums.

Outside, the world was a rainy, clamorous, benighted place. And to-morrow they must go forth into it again. But for the moment they would snatch a little rapture, finding it the more fearfully beautiful because it was so dearly bought and so fleeting, but chiefly beautiful because they could share it together.

They were mated from the first, and all the people and the trials that had kept them apart were but incidents in a struggle toward each other. Henceforth they should win on side by side as one completed being, doing their part in war and peace, and compelling at last from the world, along with the blame and the indifference that every one has always had from the world, a certain praise and gratitude which the world gives only to those who defy it for the sake of what their own souls tell them is good and true and honorable.

THE END