John Ward, Preacher Part 15

"Oh, I see,--your lucky penny; I'll get it for you in a minute."

And stretching out flat upon his stomach, he wriggled almost under the bookcase, while Mr. Denner rose and furtively brushed the dust from his knees.

"Here it is, uncle William," Willie said, emerging from the shadow of the bookcase; "it was clear against the wall, and 'most down in a crack."

Mr. Denner took the penny from the child, and rubbed it nervously between his hands.

"I suppose," he inquired with great hesitation, "you did not chance to observe, William, which--ah--which side was up?"

"No, sir," answered Willie, with amazement written on his little freckled face; "it hadn't fallen, you know, uncle; it was just leaning against the wall. I came in to bring my Latin exercise," he went on. "I'll run back to school now, sir."

He was off like a flash, saying to himself in a mystified way, "I wonder if uncle William plays heads and tails all alone in the office?"

Mr. Denner stood holding the penny, and gazing blankly at it, unconscious of the dust upon his cheek.

"That did not decide it," he murmured. "I must try something else."

For Mr. Denner had some small superst.i.tions, and it is doubtful if he would have questioned fate again in the same way, even if he had not been interrupted at that moment by the rector.

Dr. Howe came into the office beating his hands to warm them, his face ruddy and his breath short from a walk in the cold wind. He had come to see the lawyer about selling a bit of church land; Mr. Denner hastily slipped his penny into his pocket, and felt his face grow hot as he thought in what a posture the rector would have found him had he come a few minutes sooner.

"Bless my soul, Denner," Dr. Howe said, when, the business over, he rose to go, "this den of yours is cold!" He stooped to shake the logs in the small stove, hoping to start a blaze. The rector would have resented any man's meddling with his fire, but all Mr. Denner's friends felt a sort of responsibility for him, which he accepted as a matter of course.

"Ah, yes," replied Mr. Denner, "it is chilly here. It had not occurred to me, but it is chilly. Some people manage to keep their houses very comfortable in weather like this. It is always warm at the rectory, I notice, and at Henry Dale's, or--ah--the Misses Woodhouse's,--always warm."

The rector, taking up a great deal of room in the small office, was on his knees, puffing at the fire until his face was scarlet. "Yes. I don't believe that woman of yours half looks after your comfort, Denner. Can't be a good housekeeper, or she would not let this stove get so choked with ashes."

"No," Mr. Denner acknowledged--"ah--I am inclined to agree with you, doctor. Not perhaps a really good housekeeper. But few women are,--very few. You do not find a woman like Miss Deborah Woodhouse often, you know."

"True enough," said Dr. Howe, pulling on his big fur gloves. "That salad of hers, the other night, was something to live for. What is that?--'plunge his fingers in the salad bowl'--'tempt the dying anchorite to eat,'--I can't remember the lines, but that is how I feel about Miss Deborah's salad." The rector laughed in a quick, breezy ba.s.s, beat his hands together, and was ready to start.

"Yes," said Mr. Denner, "just so,--quite so. But Miss Deborah is a remarkable woman, an estimable woman. One scarcely knows which is the more admirable, Miss Deborah or Miss Ruth. Which should you--ah--which do you most admire?"

The rector turned, with one hand on the door-k.n.o.b, and looked at the lawyer, with a sudden gleam in his keen eyes. "Well, I am sure I don't know. I never thought of comparing them. They are both, as you say, estimable ladies."

"Oh, yes, yes, just so," said Mr. Denner hurriedly. "I only mentioned it because--it was merely in the most general way; I--I--did not mean to compare--oh, not at all--of course I should never discuss a lady's worth, as it were. I spoke in confidence; I merely wondered what your opinion might be--not"--cried Mr. Denner, bursting into a cold perspiration of fright to see how far his embarra.s.sment had betrayed him--"not that I really care to know! Oh, not at all!"

The rector flung his head back, and his rollicking laugh jarred the very papers on Mr. Denner's desk.

"It is just as well you don't, for I am sure I could not say. I respect them both immensely. I have from boyhood," he added, with a droll look.

Mr. Denner coughed nervously.

"It is not of the slightest consequence," he explained,--"not the slightest. I spoke thoughtlessly; ah--unadvisedly."

"Of course, of course; I understand," cried the rector, and forbore to add a good-natured jest at Mr. Denner's embarra.s.sment, which was really painful.

But when he was well out of hearing, he could not restrain a series of chuckles.

"By Jove!" he cried, clapping his thigh, "Denner!--Denner and Miss Deborah! Bless my soul,--Denner!"

His mirth, however, did not last long; some immediate annoyances of his own forced themselves into his mind.

Before he went to the lawyer's office, he had had a talk with Mrs. Dale, which had not been pleasant; then a letter from Helen had come; and now an anxious wrinkle showed itself under his fur cap, as he walked back to the rectory.

He had gone over to show Mr. Dale a somewhat highly seasoned sketch in "Bell's Life;" in the midst of their enjoyment of it, they were interrupted by Mrs. Dale.

"I want to speak to you about Lois, brother. Ach! how this room smells of smoke!" she said.

"Why, what has the child done now?" said Dr. Howe.

"You needn't say 'What has she done now?' as though I was always finding fault," Mrs. Dale answered, "though I do try to do my Christian duty if I see any one making a mistake."

"Adele," remarked the rector, with a frankness which was entirely that of a brother, and had no bearing upon his office, "you are always ready enough with that duty of fault-finding." Mr. Dale looked admiringly at his brother-in-law. "Why don't you think of the duty of praise, once in a while? Praise is a Christian grace too much neglected. Don't you think so, Henry?"

But Mrs. Dale answered instead: "I am ready enough to praise when there is occasion for it, but you can't expect me to praise Lois for her behavior to young Forsythe. Arabella says the poor youth is completely prostrated by the blow."

"Bah!" murmured Mr. Dale under his breath; but Dr. Howe said impatiently,--

"What do you mean? What blow?"

"Why, Lois has refused him!" cried Mrs. Dale. "What else?"

"I didn't know she had refused him," the rector answered slowly. "Well, the child is the best judge, after all."

"I am glad of it," said Mr. Dale,--"I am glad of it. He was no husband for little Lois,--no, my dear, pray let me speak,--no husband for Lois.

I have had some conversation with him, and I played euchre with him once.

He played too well for a gentleman, Archibald."

"He beat you, did he?" said the rector.

"That had nothing to do with it!" cried Mr. Dale. "I should have said the same thing had I been his partner"--

"Fudge!" Mrs. Dale interrupted, "as though it made the slightest difference how a man played a silly game! Don't be foolish, Henry. Lois has made a great mistake, but I suppose there is nothing to be done, unless young Forsythe should try again. I hope he will, and I hope she will have more sense."

The rector was silent. He could not deny that he was disappointed, and as he went towards the post-office, he almost wished he had offered a word of advice to Lois. "Still, a girl needs her mother for that sort of thing, and, after all, perhaps it is best. For really, I should be very dull at the rectory without her." Thus he comforted himself for what was only a disappointment to his vanity, and was quite cheerful when he opened Helen's letter.

The post-office was in that part of the drug-store where the herbs were kept, and the letters always had a faint smell of pennyroyal or wormwood about them. The rector read his letter, leaning against the counter, and crumpling some bay leaves between his fingers; and though he was interrupted half a dozen times by people coming for their mail, and stopping to gossip about the weather or the church, he gained a very uncomfortable sense of its contents.

"More of this talk about belief," he grumbled, as he folded the last sheet, covered with the clear heavy writing, and struck it impatiently across his hand before he thrust it down into his pocket. "What in the world is John Ward thinking of to let her bother her head with such questions?"

"I am surprised" Helen wrote, "to see how narrowness and intolerance seem to belong to intense belief. Some of these elders in John's church, especially a man called Dean (the father of my Alfaretta), believe in their horrible doctrines with all their hearts, and their absolute conviction make them blind to any possibility of good in any creed which does not agree with theirs. Apparently, they think they have reached the ultimate truth, and never even look for new light. That is the strangest thing to me. Now, for my part, I would not sign a creed to-day which I had written myself, because one lives progressively in religion as in everything else. But, after all, as I said to Gifford the other day, the _form_ of belief is of so little consequence. The main thing is to have the realization of G.o.d in one's own soul; it would be enough to have that, I should think. But to some of us G.o.d is only another name for the power of good,--or, one might as well say force, and that is blind and impersonal; there is nothing comforting or tender in the thought of force. How do you suppose the conviction of the personality of G.o.d is reached?"

"All nonsense," said the rector, as he went home, striking out with his cane at the stalks of golden-rod standing stiff with frost at the roadside. "I shall tell Gifford he ought to know better than to have these discussions with her. Women don't understand such things; they go off at half c.o.c.k, and think themselves skeptics. All nonsense!"

But the rector need not have felt any immediate anxiety about his niece.

As yet such questions were only a sort of intellectual exercise; the time had not come when they should be intensely real, and she should seek for an answer with all the force of her life, and know the anguish of despair which comes when a soul feels itself adrift upon a sea of unbelief. They were not of enough importance to talk of to John, even if she had not known they would trouble him; she and Gifford had merely spoken of them as speculations of general interest; yet all the while they were shaping and moulding her mind for the future.

But the letter brought a cloud on Dr. Howe's face; he wanted to forget it, he was impatient to shake off the unpleasant remembrances it roused, and so engaged was he in this that by the time he had reached the rectory Mr. Denner and his perplexities were quite out of his mind, though the lawyer's face was still tingling with mortification.