John Ward, Preacher Part 50

"Do you suppose I haven't thought of it?" demanded the rector.

"And Helen must go," continued Mrs. Dale, "belief or no belief."

Her brother shook his head, and sighed.

"I don't believe it will do any good for me to see him, but of course I shall go to Lockhaven unless I get a favorable answer to my letter.

I wrote him yesterday. But do you imagine that any talk of our feelings is going to move a man like Ward? His will is like iron. I saw that in his letter to Helen. I suppose it pains him to do this. I suppose he does suffer, in a way. But if he can contemplate her distress unmoved, do you think anything I can urge will change him? He'll wait for her conversion, if it takes her whole life."

"But Helen has been confirmed," said Mrs. Dale, in a bewildered way; "what more does he want?"

"He wants her to be converted, I tell you," cried her brother, "and he's bound to bring it about! He uses the ill.u.s.tration of giving medicine to a sick child to insure its recovery, no matter at what cost of pain to the child or the giver."

"But isn't it the same thing?" persisted Mrs. Dale: "converted--confirmed? We don't use such expressions in the Church, but it is the same thing."

"'Experience a change of heart,' Ward says in his letter; 'be convicted of the sin of unbelief'!" the rector said contemptuously, and ignoring his sister's question; "but conversion with him merely means a belief in h.e.l.l, so far as I can make out."

"Well, of course Helen is all wrong not to believe in h.e.l.l," said Mrs.

Dale promptly; "the Prayer-Book teaches it, and she must. I'll tell her so. All you have to do is to see this Mr. Ward and tell him she will; and just explain to him that she has been confirmed,--we don't use those Methodistical expressions in the Church. Perhaps the sect he belongs to does, but one always thinks of them as rather belonging to the lower cla.s.ses, you know. I suppose we ought not to expect anything else from such a person,--who ever heard of his people? I always said the marriage would turn out badly," she added triumphantly. "You remember, I told you so?"

The rector sighed. After all, Mrs. Dale did not help him. It was useless to try to impress her with the theological side of the matter, as she only returned with fresh vigor to the charge that it was a disgrace to the family. So he rose to go, saying, "Well, I'll wait for Ward's letter, and if he persists in this insanity I'll start for Lockhaven. You might see Helen, and see what you can do."

As Mrs. Dale began in her positive way to say how he ought to talk to "this man," Mr. Dale came in.

"I thought I heard your voice," he said to his brother-in-law, "and I came up"--he looked deprecatingly at his wife--"to ask you to step down and have a pipe. I want to speak to you about Denner's books."

But before Dr. Howe could answer, Mrs. Dale poured forth all the troublesome and disgraceful story of the "separated husband and wife."

Mr. Dale listened intently; once he flourished his red handkerchief across his eyes as he blew his nose. When he did this, he scattered some loose tobacco about, and Mrs. Dale stopped to reprimand him. "I tell you," she ended emphatically, "it is this new-fangled talk of woman's rights that has done all this. What need has Helen of opinions of her own? A woman ought to be guided by her husband in everything!"

"You see it is pretty bad, Henry," said the rector.

"It is,--it is," said the older man, his mild eyes glistening; "but oh, Archibald, how he loves her!"

"Loves her?" cried the other two together.

"Yes," continued Mr. Dale slowly; "one feels as if we ought not even to discuss it, for we are scarcely capable of understanding it. The place whereon we stand is holy ground."

"Henry," said his wife, "there's no fool like an old fool. You don't know what you are talking about."

But when Dr. Howe, softening a little since Mr. Dale did not abuse John Ward, said he must tell Helen that,--it would please her,--Mrs. Dale begged him to do nothing of the sort.

"It would be just like her to consider the whole affair a unique mode of expressing affection. We had better try to show her it is a disgrace to the family. Love, indeed! Well, I don't understand love like that!"

"No," Mr. Dale responded, "no, I suppose not. But, my dear, don't you wish you did?"

When Dr. Howe told Helen of his plan of going to Lockhaven, she tried to show him that it was useless; but as she saw his determination, she ceased to oppose him. She would have spared John if she could (and she knew how impossible it was that the rector could move her husband), yet she felt that her family had a right to insist upon a personal explanation, and to make an effort, however futile, to induce her husband to take her home. In the mean time, they waited for an answer to the rector's letter. Helen had written, but she knew no answer would come to her. She understood too well that sweet and gentle nature, which yielded readily in small things, and was possessed of invincible determination in crises, to hope that John could change. Yet she had written; she had shared her hopelessness as well as her grief with him, when she told him how impossible it was for her to think as he did. She showed how fast and far she had drifted into darkness and unbelief since she had left him, yet she held out no hope that a return to him could throw any light into those eternal shadows. "I understand it all," she had written, stopping to comfort him even while she told him how futile was his pain and hers, "and oh, how you must suffer, my darling, but it cannot be helped unless you free yourself from your convictions. Perhaps that will come some time; until then, you can only be true to yourself. But I understand it all,--I know."

Those days of waiting were hard to bear. The distance between her uncle and herself had suddenly widened; and she could not see that beneath his irritation there was really a very genuine sympathy.

She had vaguely hoped that Lois would comfort her, for one turns instinctively in grief to the nearest loving thing, and she knew her cousin loved her. Yet Lois had not been able to understand, and Helen would hear no words of sympathy which were not as much for John as for herself.

It was not until Thursday that she had told Lois why she had come back.

They were in their pleasant sitting-room, Lois walking restlessly about, with such puzzled expectation on her face that its white sadness was almost banished. Helen sat with her hands clasped loosely in her lap, and leaning her head against the window. Below, there was the bloom and glory of the garden, b.u.t.terflies darted through the suns.h.i.+ne, and the air was full of the honeyed hum of the bees. But the silence of the room seemed only a breathless anxiety, which forbade rest of mind or body; and so Helen had roused herself, and tried to tell her cousin what it all meant; but even as she talked she felt Lois's unspoken condemnation of her husband, and her voice hardened, and she continued with such apparent indifference Lois was entirely deceived. "So you see," she ended, "I cannot go back to Lockhaven."

Lois, walking back and forth, as impatient as her father might have been, listened, her eyes first filling with tears, and then flas.h.i.+ng angrily.

She threw herself on her knees beside Helen, as she finished, and put her arms about her cousin's waist, kissing her listless hands in a pa.s.sion of sympathy. "Oh, my dear!" she cried, her cheeks wet with tears, "how dreadful--how horrible! Oh, Helen, darling, my poor darling!"

Lois did not stop to consider the theological side of the matter, which was a relief to Helen. She tried to quiet the young girl's distress, holding her bright head against her breast, and soothing her with gentle words.

"If I were you," Lois said at last, "I would go back to Lockhaven; I would _go_, if it had to be in disguise!"--

"Not if you loved John," Helen answered.

"How can you bear it?" Lois whispered, looking up into the calm face with a sort of awe which checked her tears. "It is so cruel, Helen, you cannot forgive him."

"There is nothing to forgive; I hoped you would understand that, Lois.

John cannot do anything else, don't you see? Why, I would not love him as I do, if, having such convictions, he was not true to them. He must be true before anything else."

Lois was sitting on the floor in front of her, clasping her knees with her arms, and rocking back and forth. "Well," she cried hotly, "I don't understand anything about his convictions, but I tell you what it is, Helen, I do understand how hard it is for you! And I can never forgive him, if you can. It is all very well to think about truth, but it seems to me he ought to think about you."

"But don't you see," Helen explained, still vaguely hoping that Lois would understand, "he thinks only of me? Why, Lois, it is all for me."

Lois's face was flushed with excitement. "I don't care!" she cried, "it is cruel--cruel--cruel!"

Helen looked at her steadily a moment, and then she said patiently, "The motive is what makes cruelty, Lois. And can't you see that it is only because of his love that he does this? If he loved me less, he could not do it."

"Heavens!" Lois exclaimed, springing to her feet, "I wish he loved you less, then! No, there is no use saying things like that, Helen; he is narrow and bigoted,--he is a cruel fanatic." She did not see that Helen had half risen from her chair, and was watching her with gleaming eyes.

"He actually prides himself on being able to make you suffer,--you read me that yourself out of his letter. He's a bad man, and I'm glad you've done with him"--

She would have said more, but Helen had followed her swiftly across the room, and grasping her arm until the girl cried out with pain, she put her hand over those relentless young lips. "Hus.h.!.+" she cried, in a terrible voice; "do not dare to speak so to me! If I hear such words again, I shall leave this house. You may not be able to see my husband's n.o.bleness, but at least you can be silent."

Lois pushed her hand away, and stared at her in amazement. "I didn't mean to offend you," she stammered. "I only meant that he"--

"Do not speak of him!" Helen said pa.s.sionately, her breath still quick, and her face white to the lips. "I do not wish to hear what you meant!

Oh, Lois, Lois, I thought that you"--She turned away, and pressed her hands hard on her eyes a moment; then she said, "I understand--I know--your affection for me prompted it--but I cannot listen, Lois, if you have such feelings about him. I will take your sympathy for granted after this. I do not want to talk about it again."

Lois went silently out of the room, her heart overflowing with love for her cousin, and added rage at the man who had come between them. She found Gifford walking about in the hall down-stairs, and, forgetful of her father's injunction, she went quickly up to him, trembling with excitement, and half sobbing.

"Giff--oh, Giff--that man, that John Ward, has sent Helen back! She's here--she can't go home!"

Gifford was too astounded to speak.

"Yes," Lois cried, clinging to his arm, her eyes overflowing, "he is a wicked man--he is cruel--and she thinks I am, Giff, just because I said he was!"

Lois's agitation drove him into his most deliberate speech.

"What do you mean? I do not understand."

"Of course not! n.o.body could think of anything so awful. Come into the library, and I'll tell you. Father does not want it spoken of, Gifford, but since you know she's here, I might as well explain."