A Singular Life

XXI.

Captain Hap was wiser in his generation than 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 scandal 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. Suspicion 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 Hands were withdrawn that had never failed to meet his heartily.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 portions of the town.

Before he had time to determine on any given 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 more, and Fenton looked embarrassed. 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 uncomfortable, 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 slander by some explanation, or change of tack? You will adapt your course hereafter to the circumstances?”

“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 subjected 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. That dates back about two thousand 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 thoughtfully 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! 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 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 important 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.

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,” said Lena, 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 shouldn’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 as 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 working-clothes, standing stolidly at her post in the most dangerous of the deadly trades, wherein no “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 dolorously.

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, who stood at a safe distance, smiling with the cynicism 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 Christlove 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 criticise, as there are few who can comprehend the rÔles 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 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 his nooning, with the rest, for his lunch. There was a well, in a yard, by the fish-flakes, and a dipper, chained, hung from the pump.

It 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 maliciously 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 grogshop on a run, with a yell. From that moment till Bayard found him, Job remembered nothing more. Such episodes of the nether world are not rare enough to be doubted, and this one is no fiction.

“I’m in for it, now,” groaned Job. “Might as well go to h—— and done with it.”

Then Bayard, haggard from watching, turned 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 ’u’d 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 saying 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—nal
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.’

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’ll 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, “I wouldn’t go on the street to-night, if I was you. I’ll 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 nothin’ outside of your own house, this six month to come! Not a soda, Job! Not a tumbler o’ milk! Not a cup o’ coffee! Not a swaller o’ water! No, nor a bite of victuals. You’ll be hunted down like a rat. There’s bread buttered with phosphorus layin’ round loose for ye most anywheres. 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.

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’ll make no odds to you. I told ’em you wouldn’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 ’tain’t true about the license?” asked the captain anxiously.

“I have nothing to conceal in the matter, Captain,” answered Bayard after a moment’s silence. “There are legalized crimes in Angel Alley which I shall fight till I die. But it will be slow work. I don’t do it by lobbying. I have my own methods, 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’ll need it!”

“Oh, you and Job will answer, I fancy,” replied 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.

“A fire on the wharves, probably,” thought Bayard; 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 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 wouldn’t be the man to tell you, and I wish to gollyswash I’d stuck to it.”

“Bob! It isn’t the Mission?”

“Oh, sir—yes! They’ve set us afire!”

“Now, Bob,” said the minister, suddenly shooting 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 sprang from half a dozen places, and had been burning 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 breast, 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.

“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 faltered, 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 solitary guardian of the ruins remained. Bayard stood before them, and looked up. Now, a singular thing had happened. The electric wire which fed the illuminated 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 steadily, 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.”

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