We Can't Have Everything Part 109

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 n.o.ble, 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 pa.s.senger.

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 Mephis...o...b..gan 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-gla.s.s 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."

"G.o.d 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 beat.i.tude, 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 a.s.sault 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 pa.s.senger, 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 s.e.xton-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 n.o.ble 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 grat.i.tude 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