John Ward, Preacher Part 32

Mr. Grier was a tall, thin man, with watery blue eyes, and a spa.r.s.e sandy beard growing like a fringe under his chin from ear to ear. He moved his jaws nervously as he waited for her answer, and plucked at his beard with long, lean fingers.

Helen smiled. "Did you think I should be a large contributor to foreign missions, Mr. Grier?"

"No, ma'am," he answered solemnly, "I was not thinking of any benefit to the heathen. I had somewhat to say which I felt might be for the good of your own soul."

Helen flushed, and flung her head back with a haughty look. "Ah,--you are very good, I'm sure," she said, "but"--

Mr. Grier interrupted her, wagging his head up and down upon his breast: "Brother Ward will forgive me for saying so, ma'am, but I had your welfare at heart. Brother Ward, you have my prayers for your dear wife."

"I--I thank you," John said, "but you must not feel that my wife is far from the Lord. Have you been told that the truth is not clear to her eyes? Yet it will be!"

"I hope so,--I hope so," responded Mr. Grier, but with very little hope in his voice; and then, shaking the reins, he jogged on down the shadowy road.

"What does he mean?" cried Helen, her voice trembling with anger, and careless whether the retreating minister overheard her. John gave her a long, tender look.

"Dearest," he said, "I am sorry he should have spoken as he did, but the prayers of a good man"--

"I don't want his prayers," she interrupted, bewildered; "it seems to me simply impertinence!"

"Helen," he said, "it cannot be impertinence to pray for a soul in danger, as yours is, my darling. I cannot tell how he knew it, but it is so. It is my sin which has kept you blind and hidden the truth from you, and how can I be angry if another man joins his prayers to mine for your eternal salvation?"

"You say this because I do not believe in eternal punishment, John?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered gently, "first because of that, and then because of all the errors of belief to which that leads."

"It all seems so unimportant," she said, sighing; "certainly nothing which could make me claim the prayers of a stranger. Ah, well, no doubt he means it kindly, but don't let us speak of it any more, dearest."

Their horses were so close, that, glancing shyly about for a moment into the twilight, Helen laid her head against his arm, and looked tenderly into his face.

He started, and then put a quick arm about her to keep her from falling.

"No," he said, "no, I will not forget." It was as though he answered some voice in his soul, and Helen looked at him in troubled wonder.

The rest of the ride was very silent. Once, when he stopped to tighten her saddle-girth for her, she bent his head back, and smiled down into his eyes. He only answered her by a look, but it was enough.

CHAPTER XIX.

Gifford Woodhouse was not quite honest with himself when he said that he felt it was time to go back to Ashurst to make his aunts a visit. He had been restless and absent-minded very often since that flying trip in the early spring. In spite of his sternest reasoning, hope was beginning to grow up in his heart again. d.i.c.k Forsythe had not come to Ashurst, and Helen said plainly that she knew Lois was not engaged to him. So why should not Gifford himself be on the spot?

"Not that I would bother Lois," he argued in his own mind, "but just to know if"--And besides, he really ought to see the two little ladies.

He left Lockhaven a few days after John Ward had preached his sermon on foreign missions at Chester. It was reported to have been "powerful,"

and Elder Dean said he wished "our own people could have been benefited by it."

"I thought the heathen were expected to be benefited by such sermons,"

Gifford said, twisting a cigarette between his fingers, as he leaned over the half-door of the elder's shop, lazily watching a long white shaving curl up under his plane. "I thought the object was a large contribution."

The elder looked up solemnly, and opened his lips with vast deliberation.

"Lawyer Woodhouse," he said, "that's your mistake. They're fer the purpose of instructing us that the heathen is d.a.m.ned, so that we will rejoice in our own salvation, and make haste to accept it if we are unconverted."

He looked hard at the young man as he spoke, for every one knew Lawyer Woodhouse did not go regularly to church, and so, presumably, was not a Christian.

Then Mr. Dean, while he pulled the shavings out of his plane, and threw them on the fragrant heap at his feet, said one or two things which made Gifford stop lounging and forget his cigarette while he listened with a grave face. "Unbelief in the church," "the example for our youth," "the heresy of the preacher's wife."

This was not the first time Gifford had heard such comments, but there was a threat in Mr. Dean's voice, though he did not put it into words, which made the young man carry a growing anxiety about Helen away with him. He could not forget it, even in the rejoicings of his home-coming, and he gave guarded answers about her which were unlike his usual frankness.

Lois noticed it, and wondered a little, but was perhaps more annoyed than troubled by it.

The shyness of her welcome Gifford quite misunderstood.

"After all," he thought, "what was the use of coming? Whatever Forsythe's chances are, there is one thing sure,--she does not care for me. She used to have that old friendly way, at least; but even that is gone, now. I might have known it. I was a fool to run into the fire again. Thank Heaven, that cad isn't here. When he comes, I'll go!"

And so he wandered forlornly about, his hands in his pockets, and a disconsolate look on his face which greatly distressed his aunts.

Somehow, too, the big fellow's presence for any length of time embarra.s.sed them. They had been so long without a man in the house, they realized suddenly that he took up a great deal of room, and that their small subjects of conversation could not interest him.

"Perhaps," said Miss Ruth shrewdly, "he has found some nice girl in Lockhaven, and misses her. What do you think, sister?"

"It is not impossible," answered Miss Deborah; "but, dear me, sister, if only Helen Jeffrey had not married so young! I always felt that Providence pointed to her for dear Giff."

"Well," said Miss Ruth, a little color creeping into her cheek, "I think Providence does arrange such things, and as Helen seems much attached to Mr. Ward, no doubt that was meant. It is gratifying to think such things always are meant. I have even thought that when a person no longer very young, even quite advanced in life, remains unmarried, it was because the other, appointed by Heaven, died, no doubt in infancy."

Miss Deborah sniffed. "I should be sorry to think all marriages were planned by Providence," she said, "for it would seem that Providence showed very poor judgment sometimes. Look at Henry Dale. I'm sure there were--_others_, who would have made him happier, and been quite as good housekeepers, too."

Miss Ruth mentioned her suspicion of the "nice girl in Lockhaven" to Lois, while Miss Deborah added that it was really no pleasure to cook for dear Giff; he was so out of spirits he didn't seem to care for anything; he did not even eat the whigs, and Lois knew how fond he was of whigs.

Very likely dear Ruth was right.

This made Lois's interest in Gifford still deeper, though she said, tossing her head with airy impatience, that she did not believe there were any nice girls in Lockhaven; there were only working people there.

Then she thought of that talk with Gifford at the stone bench, and recalled the promise she had made, and how she had sealed it. Her cheeks burned till they hurt her.

"He has forgotten it all, long ago," she said to herself; "men never remember such things. Well, he sha'n't think I remember!"

But how often Gifford remembered!

One afternoon he walked over to the stone bench, and sat down on the very same sunken step from which he had looked up into Lois's face that June evening. He saw a bunch of violets growing just where her foot must have rested, and what was more natural--for Gifford was still young--than that pencil and note-book should appear, and, with a long-drawn sigh, he should write hastily,--

O Violet, Dost thou forget?

and then stop, perhaps to sharpen his pencil, and, if the truth be told, to cast about for a rhyme.

Alas, that love and poetry should be checked by anything so commonplace as syllables! Let--wet--yet,--one can fit in the sense easily when the proper rhyme has been decided upon; and who knows but that Gifford, lying there in the gra.s.s, with the old lichen-covered step for a desk, might have written a sonnet or a madrigal which would have given him his heart's desire before the moon rose! But an interruption came.

The rector and Mr. Denner were coming back from fishing, along the road on the other side of the hedge, and Dr. Howe turned in here to follow the garden path home, instead of taking the longer way. Both pushed through a gap in the hedge, and discovered Gifford lying in the gra.s.s by the stone bench.

"h.e.l.lo!" said the rector. "Working up a case, young man?"