 CHAPTER XVI. When Theron woke next morning, Alice seemed to have dressed and left the room, a thing which had never happened before. This fact connected itself at once in his brain, with the recollection of her having made an exhibition of herself the previous evening, going forward before all eyes to join the unconverted and penitent sinners, as if she were some tramp or shady female, instead of an educated lady, a professing member from her girlhood and a minister's wife. It crossed his mind that probably she had risen and got away noiselessly for very shame at looking him in the face after such absurd behavior. Then he remembered more and grasped the situation. He had fainted in church, and had been brought home and helped to bed. Dim memories of unaccustomed faces in the bedroom, of nauseous drugs and hushed voices, came to him out of the night-time. Now that he thought of it, he was a sick man. Having settled this, he went off to sleep again, a feverish and broken sleep, and remained in this state most of the time for the following twenty-four hours. In the brief, though numerous intervals of waking, he found certain things clear in his mind. One was that he was annoyed with Alice, but would disemble his feelings. Another was that it was much pleasanter to be ill than to be forced to attend and take part in those revival meetings. These two ideas came and went in a lazy, drowsy fashion, mixing themselves up with other vagrant fancies, yet always remaining on top. In the evening, the singing from the church next door filled his room. The Soulsby's part of it was worth keeping awake for. He turned over and deliberately dozed when the congregation sang. Alice came up a number of times during the day to ask how he felt, and to bring him broth or toast water. On several occasions, when he heard her step, the perverse inclination mastered him to shut his eyes and pretend to be asleep so that she might tiptoe out again. She had a depressed and thoughtful air, and spoke to him like one whose mind was on something else, neither of them alluded to what had happened the previous evening. Toward the close of the long day she came to ask him whether he would prefer her to remain in the house instead of attending the meeting. Go, by all means, he said almost curtly. The presiding elder and the Sunday school superintendent called early Tuesday morning at the parsonage to make brotherly inquiries, and Theron was feeling so much better that he himself suggested they're coming upstairs to see him. The elder was in good spirits, he smiled approvingly, and even put in a Jacose word or two, while the superintendent sketched for the invalid in a cheerful way the leading incidents of the previous evening. There had been an enormous crowd, even greater than that of Sunday night, and everyone had been looking forward to another notable and exciting season of grace. These expectations were especially heightened when Sister Salesby ascended the pulpit stairs and took charge of the proceedings. She deferred to Paul's views about women preachers on Sundays, she said, but on weekdays she had just as much right to snatch brands from the burning as Paul or Peter or any other man. She went on like that in a breezy, offhand fashion which tickled the audience immensely, and led to the liveliest anticipations of what would happen when she began upon the evening's harvest of souls. But it was something else that happened. At a signal from Sister Salesby the stewards got up and, in an unconcerned sort of way, went through the throng to the rear of the church, locked the doors, and put the keys in their pockets. The sister dryly explained now to the surprise congregation that there was a season for all things, and that on the present occasion they would suspend the glorious work of redeeming fallen human nature, and take up instead the equally noble task of raising some fifteen hundred dollars which the church needed in its business. The doors would only be opened again when this had been accomplished. The brethren were much taken aback by this trick, and they permitted themselves to exchange a good many scowling and indignant glances, the while their professional visitors saying another of their delightfully novel sacred duets. Its charm of harmony for once fell upon unsympathetic ears. But then Sister Salesby began another monologue, defending this way of collecting money, chaffing the assemblage with bright-eyed impudence on there having been trapped, and scoring one after another neat and jacquoise little points on local characteristics, at which everybody but the individual touched, grinned broadly. She was so droll and cheeky, and with all effective in her talk, that she quite won the crowd over. She told a story about a woodchuck which fairly brought down the house. A man, she began, with a quizzical twinkle in her eye, told me once about hunting a woodchuck with a pack of dogs, and they chased it so hard that it finally escaped only by climbing a butternut tree. But my friend, I said to him, woodchucks can't climb trees, butternut trees are any other kind, and you know it. All he said in reply to me was, this woodchuck had to climb a tree. And that's the way with this congregation. You think you can't raise fifteen hundred dollars, but you've got to. So it went on. She set them all laughing, and then, with a twist of the eyes and a change of voice, low and behold, she had them nearly crying in the same breath. Under the pressure of these jumbled emotions, Brethren began to rise up in their pews and say that they would give. The wonderful woman had something smart and apt to say about each fresh contribution, and used it to screw up the general interest a notch further toward benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes and impromptu exhortations and prayers, she kept the thing whirling until a sort of duel of generosity began between two of the most unlikely men, Erastus Wynch and Levi Gorange. Everybody had been surprised when Wynch gave his first fifty dollars, but when he rose again half an hour afterward and said that, owing to the high public position of some of the new members on probation, he foresaw a great future for the church, and so felt moved to give another twenty-five dollars, there was general amazement. Moved by a common instinct, all eyes were turned upon Levi Gorange, and he, without the slightest hesitation, stood up and said that he would give one hundred dollars. There was something in his tone which must have annoyed brother Wynch, for he shot up like a dart and called out, put me down for fifty more, and then brother Gorange to his feet with an added fifty dollars, and then the two men went on raising each other till the assemblage was a gape with admiring stupefaction. This gladiatorial combat might have been going on till now, the Sunday school superintendent concluded, if Wynch hadn't subsided. The amount of the contributions hadn't been figured up yet, for sister Solzby kept the list, but there had been a tremendous lot of money raised, of that there could be no doubt. The presiding elder now told Theron that the quarterly conference had been adjourned yesterday till today. He and brother Davis were now on their way to attend the session in the church next door. The elder added, with an obvious kindly significance, that though Theron was too ill to attend it, he guessed his absence would do him no harm. Then the two men left the room, and Theron went to sleep again. Another almost blank period ensued, this time lasting for forty-eight hours. The young minister was enfolded in the coils of a fever of some sort, which brother Solzby, who had dabbled considerably in medicine, admitted he was puzzled about. Sometimes he thought that it was typhoid, and then again there were symptoms which looked suspiciously like brain fever. The Methodists of Octavius counted no physician among their numbers, and when, on the second day, Alice grew scared and decided, with brother Solzby's assent, to call in professional advice, the only doctor's name she could recall was that of Ledzmar. She was conscious of an instinctive dislike for the vague image of him her fancy had conjured up, but the reflection that he was Theron's friend, and so probably would be more moderate in his charges, decided her. Brother Solzby showed a most comforting tact and swiftness of apprehension, when Alice, in mentioning Dr. Ledzmar's name, disclosed by her manner of fear that his being sent for would create talk among the church people. He volunteered at once to act as messenger himself, and, with no better guide than her dim hints at direction, found the doctor and brought him back to the parsonage. Dr. Ledzmar expressly disclaimed to Solzby all pretense of professional skill, and made him understand that he went along solely because he liked Mr. Ware, and was interested in him, and in any case would probably be of as much use as the wisest of strange physicians, a view which the little revivalist received with comprehending nods of tacit acquiescence. Ledzmar came and was taken up to the sick room. He sat on the bedside and talked with Theron a while, and then went downstairs again. To Alice's anxious inquiries he replied that it seemed to him merely a case of overwork and over-worry, about which there was not the slightest occasion for alarm. But he says the strangest things his wife put in, he has been quite delirious at times. That means only that his brain is taking a rest as well as his body, remarked Ledzmar. That is nature's way of securing an equilibrium of repose, of recuperation. He will come out of it with his mind all the fresher and clearer. I don't believe he knows shucks, was Alice's comment when she closed the street door upon Dr. Ledzmar. Anybody could have come in and looked at a sick man and said leave him alone. You expect something more from a doctor. It's his business to say what to do, and I suppose he'll charge two dollars for telling me that my husband was resting. No, said Brother Salisby. He said he never practiced, and that he would only come as a friend. Well it isn't my idea of a friend, not to prescribe a single thing, protested Alice. Yet it seemed that no prescription was needed after all. The next morning Theron woke to find himself feeling quite restored in spirits and nerves. He sat up in bed, and after an instant of weakly giddiness, recognized that he was all right again. Greatly pleased he got up and proceeded to dress himself. There were little recurring hints of fatefulness and vertigo while he was shaving, but he had the sense to refer these to the fact that he was very, very hungry. He went downstairs and smiled with the pleased pride of a child at the surprise which his appearance at the door created. Alice and the soulsbees were at breakfast. He joined them and ate voraciously, declaring that it was worth a month's illness to have things taste so good once more. You still look white as a sheet, said Alice, warningly. If I were you, I'd be careful in my diet for a spell yet. For answer Theron let sister soulsbee help him again to ham and eggs. He talked exclusively to sister soulsbee, or rather invited her by his manner to talk to him, and listened and watched her with indolent content. There was a sort of happy and purified linger in his physical and mental being, which needed and appreciated just this, to sit next to a bright and attractive woman at a good breakfast, and be ministered to by her sprightly conversation, by the flash of her informing and inspiring eyes, and the nameless sense of support and repose which her near proximity exhaled. He felt himself figuratively leaning against sister soulsbees' buoyant personality and resting. Sister soulsbee, like the intelligent creature he was, ate his breakfast in peace, but Alice would interpose remarks from time to time. Theron was conscious of a certain annoyance at this, and knew that he was showing it by an exaggerated display of interest in everything sister soulsbee said, and persisted in it. There trembled in the background of his thoughts ever and again the recollection of a grievance against his wife, an offense which she had committed, but he put it aside as something to be grappled and dealt with when he felt again like taking up the serious and disagreeable things of life. For the moment he desired only to be amused by sister soulsbee. Her casual mention of the fact that she and her husband were taking their departure that very day appealed to him as an added reason for devoting his entire attention to her. You mustn't forget that famous talking to you threatened me with, that regular hoeing over, you know. He reminded her, when he found himself alone with her after breakfast. He smiled as he spoke, in frank enjoyment of the prospect. Sister soulsbee nodded, and aided with the roll of her eyes the effect of mock menace in her uplifted forefinger. Oh, never fear, she cried. You'll catch it hot and strong, but that'll keep till afternoon. Tell me, do you feel strong enough to go in next door and attend the trustees meeting this forenoon? It's rather important that you should be there, if you can spur yourself up to it. By the way, you haven't asked what happened at the quarterly conference yesterday. They're inside and made a little grimace of repugnance. If you knew how little I cared, he said, I did hope you'd forget about mentioning that, and everything else connected with the next door. You talk so much more interestingly about other things. Here's gratitude for you, exclaimed Sister Soulsbee, with a gay simulation of despair. Why, man alive, do you know what I've done for you? I got around on the presiding elder's blind side. I captured old Pierce. I wound Winch right around my little finger. I worked two or three of the class leaders, all on your account. The result was you went through as if you'd had your ears pinned back and been greased all over. You've got an extra $100 added to your salary. Do you hear? On the sixth question of the Order of Business, the elder ruled that the recommendation of last conference's estimating committee could be revised. Between ourselves, he was wrong, but that doesn't matter. And so you're in clover. And very friendly things were said about you, too. It was very kind of you, said Theron. I am really extremely grateful to you. He shook her by the hand to make up for what he realized to be a lack of fervor in his tones. Well then, Sister Soulsbee replied, you pull yourself together and take your place as chairman of the trustees meeting and see to it that whatever comes up, you side with old Pierce and Winch. Oh, their friends now, are they? Ask Theron with a faint play of irony about his lips. Yes, that's your ticket this election, she answered briskly. And mind you, vote it straight. Don't bother about reasons now. Just take it from me, as the song says, that things have changed since Willie died. That's all. And then come back here, and this afternoon we'll have a good old fashioned jaw. The Reverend Mr. Ware, walking with ostentatious feebleness and forcing a conventional smile upon his wan face, duly made his unexpected appearance at the trustees meeting in one of the smaller classrooms. He received their congratulations gravely and shook hands with all three. It required an effort to do this impartially. Because upon sight of Levi Gorange, there rose up suddenly within him an emotion of fierce dislike and enmity. In some enigmatic way his thoughts had kept themselves away from Gorange ever since Sunday evening. Now they concentrated with furious energy and swiftness upon him. Theron seemed able, in a flash of time, to coordinate many recollections of Gorange. The early liking Alice had professed for him. The mystery of those purchased plants in her garden. The story of the girl he had lost in church. His offer to lend him money. The way in which he had sat beside Alice at the love feast and followed her to the altar rail in the evening. These raced abreast through the young minister's brain, yet with each its own image and its relation to the others clearly defined. He found the nerve, all the same, to take this third trustee by the hand and to thank him for his congratulations, and even to say, with a surface smile of welcome, is it Brother Gorange now, I remember? The work before the meeting was chiefly of a routine kind. In most places this would have been transacted by the stewards, but in Octavius these minor officials had degenerated into mere ceremonial abstractions who humbly ratified, or by arrangement anticipated, the will of the powerful, mortgage-owning trustees. Therein sat languidly at the head of the table while these commonplace matters passed in their course, noting the intonations of Gorange's voice as he read from his secretary's book and finding his ear displeased by them. No issue arose upon any of these trivial affairs and the minister, feeling faint and weary in the heat, wondered why Sister Solzby had insisted on his coming. All at once he set up straight, with an instinctive warning in his mind that here was the thing. Gorange had taken up the subject of the debt-raising evening and read out its essentials as they had been embodied in a report of the stewards. The gross sum obtained in cash and promises was $1,560. The stewards had collected of this a trifle less than half, but hoped to get it all during the ensuing quarter. There were also the bill of Mr. and Mrs. Solzby for $150 and the increase of $100 in the pastor's salary and $25 in the apportioned contribution of the charge toward the presiding elder's maintenance, the two latter items of which the quarterly conference had sanctioned. I want to hear the names of the subscribers and their amounts read out, put in Brother Pierce. When this was done, it became apparent that much more than half of the entire amount had been offered by two men. Levi Gorange's $450 and Erastus Wynch's $425 left only $690 to be divided up among some 70 or 80 other members of the congregation. Brother Pierce speedily stopped the reading of these subordinate names. There of no concern whatever, he said, despite the fact that his own might have been reached in time. Those first names are what I was getting at. Have those two first amounts, the big ones, been paid? One has, the other not, replied Gorange. Precisely, remarked the senior trustee. And I'm going to move that it needn't be paid either. When Brother Wynch here began hollering out those extra $25s and $50s, that evening, it was under a complete misapprehension. He'd been on the cheese board that same Monday afternoon and he'd done what he thought was a mighty big stroke of business and he felt liberal, according. I know just what that feeling is myself. If I'd been making a min of money instead of losing all the while, as I do, I'd have done just the same. But the next day, lo and behold, Brother Wynch found that it was all a mistake. He hadn't made a single penny. Fact is, I lost by the whole transaction, put in Erastus Wynch, defiantly. Just so, Brother Pierce went on. He lost money, you have his word for it. Well then, I say it would be a burning shame for us to consent to touch one penny of what he offered to give in the fullness of his heart while he was laboring under that delusion. And I move he not be asked for it. We've got quite as much as we need without it. I put in my motion. That is, you don't put it, suggested Wynch, correctly. You move it. And Brother Ware, whom we're also glad to see able to come and preside, he'll put it. There was a moment's silence. You've heard the motion, said Theron, tentatively, and then paused for possible remarks. He was not going to meddle in this thing himself. And Goranj was the only other one who might have an opinion to offer. The necessities of the situation forced him to glance at the lawyer inquiringly. He did so and turned his eyes away again like a shot. Goranj was looking him squarely in the face and the look was freighted with satirical contempt. The young minister spoke between clenched teeth. All those in favor will say aye. Brothers Pierce and Wynch put up a simultaneous and confident aye. No, you don't, interposed the lawyer with deliberate, sneering emphasis. Aye decidedly protest against Wynch's voting. He's directly interested and he mustn't vote. Your chairman knows that perfectly well. Yes, I think Brother Wynch ought not to vote, decided Theron with great calmness. He saw now what was coming. And underneath his surface composure there were sharp flutterings. Very well then, said Goranj, I vote no and it's a tie. It rests with the chairman now to cast the deciding vote and say whether this interesting arrangement shall go through or not. Me, said Theron, eyeing the lawyer with a cool self-control which had come all at once to him. Me, oh, I vote aye. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Of the damnation of Theron Ware This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederick, Chapter 17. Well, I did what you told me to do. Theron Ware remarked to Sister Soulsby when at last they found themselves alone in the sitting-room after the midday meal. It had taken not a little strategic skirmishing to secure the room to themselves, for the hospitable Alice, much touched by the thought of her new friend's departure that very evening, had gladly proposed to let all the work stand over until night and devote herself entirely to Sister Soulsby. When, finally, Brother Soulsby conceived and deftly executed the coup of interesting her in the budding of roses and then leading her off into the garden to see with her own eyes how it was done, Theron had a sense of being left alone with a co-conspirator. The notion impelled him to plunge at once into the heart of their mystery. I did what you told me to do, he repeated, looking up from his low easy chair to where she sat by the desk, and I dare say you won't be surprised when I add that I have no respect for myself for doing it. And yet you would go and do it right over again, eh? The woman said, in bright, perked tones, nodding her head and smiling at him with roguish, comprehending eyes. Yes, that's the way we're built. We spend our lives doing that sort of thing. I don't know that you would precisely grasp my meaning, said the young minister, with a polite effort in his words to mask the untoward side of the suggestion. It is a matter of conscience with me and I am pained and shocked at myself. Sister Soulsby drummed for an absent moment with her thin, nervous fingers on the desktop. I guess maybe you'd better go and lie down again, she said gently. You're a sick man still, and it's no good you're worrying your head just now with things of this sort. You'll see them differently when you're quite yourself again. No, no, pleaded Theron. Do let us have our talk out. I'm all right, my mind is as clear as a bell. Truly, I've really counted on this talk with you. But there's something else to talk about, isn't there, besides, besides your conscience? She asked. Her eyes bent upon him with the kindly pressure as she spoke, which took all possible harshness from her meaning. Theron answered the glance rather than her words. I know that you are my friend, he said simply. Sister Soulsby straightened herself and looked down upon him with a new intentness. Well then, she began, let's thrash this thing out now and be done with it. You say it's hurt your conscience to do just one little hundredth part of what there is to be done here. Ask yourself what you mean by that. Mind, I'm not quarreling, and I'm not thinking about anything except just your own state of mind. You think you soiled your hands by doing what you did. That is to say, you wanted all the dirty work done by other people. That's it, isn't it? The Reverend Mr. Ware sat up in turn and looked doubtingly into his companion's face. Oh, we were going to be frank, you know, she added, with a pleasant play of mingled mirth and honest liking in her eyes. No, he said, picking his words. My point would be rather that, that there ought not to have been any of what you yourself call this dirty work. That is my feeling. Now we're getting at it, said Sister Soulsby briskly. My dear friend, you might just as well say that potatoes are unclean and unfit to eat because manure is put into the ground they grow in. Just look at the case. Your church here was running behind every year. Your people got into a habit of putting in nickels instead of dimes and letting you sweat for the difference. That's a habit like tobacco or biting your fingernails or anything else. Either you were all to come to smash here or the people had to be shaken up, stood on their heads, broken of their habit. It's my business, mine and Soulsby's, to do that sort of thing. We came here and we did it, did it up brown too. We not only raised all the money the church needs and to spare, but I took a personal shine to you and went out of my way to fix things for you. It isn't only the extra hundred dollars, but the whole tone of the congregation has changed toward you now. You'll see that they'll be asking to have you back here next spring and you're solid with the presiding elder too. Well now, tell me straight, is that worthwhile or not? I've told you that I am very grateful, answered the minister, and I say it again and I shall never be tired of repeating it, but it was the means I had in mind. Quite so rejoined the sister patiently. If you saw the way a hotel dinner was cooked, you wouldn't be able to stomach it. Did you ever see a play in a theater, I mean? I suppose not, but you'll understand when I say that the performance looks one way from where the audience sit and quite a different way when you are behind the scenes. There you see that the trees and houses are cloth and the moon is tissue paper and the flying fairy is a middle-aged woman strung up on a rope. That doesn't prove that the play out in front isn't beautiful and affecting and all that. It only shows that everything in this world is produced by machinery, by organization. The trouble is that you've been let in on the stage behind the scenes, so to speak, and you're so green, if you'll pardon me, that you want to sit down and cry because the trees are cloth and the moon is a lantern. And I say don't be such a goose. I see what you mean, Theron said with an answering smile. He added more gravely, all the same the winch business seems to me. Now the winch business is my own affair. Sister souls be broken abruptly. I take all the responsibility for that. You need know nothing about it. You simply voted as you did on the merits of the cases he presented them, that's all. But Theron began and then paused. Something had occurred to him and he knitted his brows to follow its course of expansion in his mind. Suddenly he raised his head. Then you arranged with winch to make those bogus offers just to lead the others on? He demanded. Sister souls be's large eyes beamed down upon him in reply, at first in open merriment and then more soberly till their regard was almost pensive. Let us talk of something else, she said. All that is past and gone. It has nothing to do with you anyway. I've got some advice to give you about keeping up this grip you've got on your people. The young minister had risen to his feet while she spoke. He put his hands in his pockets and with rounded shoulders began slowly pacing the room. After a turn or two he came to the desk and leaned against it. I doubt if it's worthwhile going into that, he said. In the solemn tone of one who feels that an irrevocable thing is being uttered. She waited to hear more, apparently. I think I shall go away, give up the ministry, he added. Sister souls be's eyes revealed no such shock of consternation as he unconsciously had looked for. They remained quite calm and when she spoke they deepened to fit her speech with what he read to be a gaze of affectionate melancholy one might say pity. She shook her head slowly. No, don't let anyone else hear you say that, she replied. My poor young friend, it's no good to even think it. The real wisdom is to school yourself to move along smoothly and not fret and get the best of what's going. I've known others who felt as you do. Of course there are times when every young man of brains and high notion feels that way but there's no help for it. Those who tried to get out only broke themselves. Those who stayed in and made the best of it, well, one of them will be a bishop in another 10 years. Therein had started walking again but the moral degradation of it, he snapped out at her over his shoulder. I'd rather learn the meanest living at an honest trade and be free from it. They may all be, responded Sister Soulsby, but it isn't a question of what you'd rather do. It's what you can do. How could you earn a living? What trade or business do you suppose you could take up now and get a living out of? Not one, my man, not one. Therein stopped and stared at her. This view of his capabilities came upon him with the force and effect of a blow. I don't discover myself, he began stumblingly, that I'm so conspicuously inferior to the men I see about me who do make livings and very good ones too. Of course you're not, she replied with easy promptness. You're greatly the other way or I shouldn't be taking this trouble with you but you're what you are because you're where you are. The moment you try on being somewhere else, you're done for. In all this world, nobody else comes to such unmerciful and universal grief as the unfrocked priest. The phrase sent Theran's fancy roving. I know a Catholic priest, he said, irrelevantly. Who doesn't believe in Adam in, in things? Very likely, said Sister Soulsby, most of us do. But you don't hear him talking about going and earning his living, I'll bet. Or if he does, he takes powerful good care not to go, all the same. They've got horse sense, those priests. They're artists too. They know how to allow for the machinery behind the scenes. But it's all so different, urged the young minister. The same things are not expected of them. Now I sat the other night and watched those people, you got up around the altar rail, groaning and shouting and crying and the others jumping up and down with excitement and Sister Lovejoy, did you see her? Coming out of her pew and regularly waltzing in the aisle with her eyes shut like a whirling dervish. I positively believe it was all that made me ill. I couldn't stand it. I can't stand it now, I won't go back to it. Nothing shall make me. Oh yes you will, she rejoined, soothingly. There's nothing else to do, just put a good face on it and make up your mind to get through by treading on as few corns as possible and keeping your own toes well in and you'll be surprised how easy it'll come to be. You were speaking of the revival business. Now that exemplifies just what I was saying. It's a part of our machinery. Now a church is like everything else. It's got to have a boss, a head and authority of some sort that people will listen to in mind. The Catholics are different as you say. Their church is chuck full of authority all the way from the pope down to the priest and accordingly, they do as they're told but the Protestants, your Methodists most of all, they say, no we don't have any authority. We won't obey any boss. Very well, what happens? We who are responsible for running the thing and raising the money and so on, we have to put on a spurt every once in a while and work up a general state of excitement and while it's going, don't you see that that is the authority, the mode of power? Whatever you like to call it, by which things are done, other denominations don't need it. We do and that's why we've got it. But the dishonesty of it all, Theron broke forth. He moved about again, his bowed face drawn as with bodily suffering, the low born tricks, the hypocrisies. I feel as if I could never so much as look at these people here again without disgust. Oh, now that's where you make your mistake, Sister Soulsby put in placidly. These people of yours are not a wit worse than other people. They've got their good streaks and their bad streaks, just like the rest of us. Take them by and large, they're quite on a par with other folks, the whole country through. I don't believe there's another congregation in the conference where this sort of thing would have been needed or I might say tolerated, insisted Theron. Perhaps you're right, the other assented, but that only shows that your people here are different from the others, not that they're worse. You don't seem to realize Octavius, so far as the Methodists are concerned, is 20 or 30 years behind the times. Now that has its advantages and its disadvantages. The church here is tough and coarse and full of grit, like a grindstone. And it does ministers from other nimminy, pimminy places, all sorts of good to come here once in a while and rub themselves up against it. It scours the rust and mildew off from their piety. And they go back singing and shouting. But of course, it's had a different effect with you. Your razor steel instead of scythe steel and the grinding's been too rough and violent for you. But you see what I mean. These people here really take their primitive Methodism seriously. To them, the profession of entire sanctification is truly a genuine thing. Well, don't you see? When people just know that they're saved, it doesn't seem to them to matter so much what they do. They feel that ordinary rules may well be bent and twisted in the interest of people so supernaturally good as they are. That's pure human nature, it's always been like that. Therein paused in his walk to look absently at her. That thought, he said, in a vague, slow way, seems to be springing up in my path whichever way I turn. It oppresses me and yet it fascinates me. This idea that the dead men have known more than we know, done more than we do, that there is nothing new anywhere that, nevermind the dead men, interposed, Sister Solzby. Just you come and sit down here. I hate to have you straddling about the room when I'm trying to talk to you. Therein obeyed and as he sank into the low seat, Sister Solzby drew up her chair and put her hand on his shoulder. Her gaze rested upon his with impressive steadiness. And now I want to talk seriously to you as a friend, she began. You mustn't breathe to any living soul the shadow of a hint of this nonsense about leaving the ministry. I could see how you were feeling. I saw the book you were reading the first time I entered this room and that made me like you. Only I expected to find you mixing up more worldly gumption with your renon. Well, perhaps I like you all the better for not having it, for being so delightfully fresh. At any rate, that made me sail in and straighten your affairs for you. And now, for God's sake, keep them straight. Just put all notions of anything else out of your head. Watch your chief men and women and be friends with them. Keep your eye open for what they think you ought to do and do it. Have your own ideas as much as you like. Read what you like. Say damn under your breath as much as you like, but don't let go of your job. I've knocked about too much and I've seen too many promising young fellows cut their own throats for pure moonshine not to have a right to say that. Theran could not be insensible to the friendly hand on his shoulder or to the strenuous sincerity of the voice which thus adjured him. Well, he said vaguely, smiling up into her earnest eyes. If we agree that it is moonshine. See here, she exclaimed, with renewed animation, patting his shoulder in a brisk, automatic way to point the beginnings of her confidences. I'll tell you something, it's about myself. I've got a religion of my own and it's got just one plank in it. And that is that the time to separate the sheep from the goats is on judgment day and that it can't be done a minute before. The young minister took in the thought and turned it about in his mind and smiled upon it. And that brings me to what I'm going to tell you, sister souls be continued. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her knees so that one well-shaped and artistically shot foot poised itself close to Theron's hand. Her eyes dwelt upon his face with an engaging candor. I began life, she began. As a girl, by running away from a stupid home with a man I knew was married already. After that, I supported myself for a good many years, generally at first, on the stage. I've been a front-ranker in Amazon ballets and I've been leading lady in comic opera companies out west. I've told fortunes in one room of a mining camp hotel where the biggest game of pharaoh in the territory went on in another. I've been a professional clairvoyant and I've been a professional medium and I've been within one vote of being indicted by a grand jury. And the money that bought that vote was put up by the smartest and most famous train gambler between Omaha and Frisco, a gentleman who died in his boots and took three sheriff's deputies along with him to kingdom come. Now, that's my record. Theron looked earnestly at her and said nothing. And now take Soulsby, she went on. Of course I take it for granted there's a good deal that he has never felt called upon to mention. He hasn't what you call a talkative temperament, but there is also a good deal that I do know. He's been an actor too and to this day I'll back him against Edwin Booth himself to recite Clarence's dream. And he's been a medium and he was a traveling phrenologist and for a long time he was advance agent for a British blonde show and when I first saw him he was lecturing on female diseases. And he had his little turn with the grand jury too. In fact, he was what you might call a regular bad old rooster. Again Theron suffered the pause to lapse without comment. Save for an amorphous sort of conversation which he felt to be going on between his eyes and those of Sister Soulsby. Well then, she resumed, so much for us apart, now about us together. We liked each other from the start, we compared notes and we found that we both soured on living by fakes, that we were tired of the road and wanted to settle down and be respectable in our old age. We had a little money enough to see us through a year or two. Soulsby had always hungered and longed to own a garden and raise flowers and had never been able to stay long enough in one place to see so much as a bean pod ripened. So we took a little place in a quiet country village down on the southern tier and he planted everything three deep all over the place and I bought a room full of cheap good books and we started in. We took to it like ducks to water for a while and I don't say that we couldn't have stood it out just doing nothing to this very day. But as luck would have it, during the first winter there was a revival at the local Methodist Church and we went every evening, at first just to kill time and then because we found we liked the noise and excitement in general racket of the thing. After it was all over, each of us found that the other had been mighty near going up to the rail and joining the mourners and another thing that occurred to each of us too, that is, what tremendous improvements there were possible in the way that amateur revivalist worked up his business. That struck in our claws and we figured on it all through the winter. Well, to make a long story short, we finally went into the thing ourselves. Tell me one thing, interposed Theron, I'm anxious to understand it all as we go along. Were you and he at any time sincerely converted? That is, I mean, genuinely convicted of sin and conscious of, you know what I mean. Oh bless you, yes, responded Sister Solzby, not only once, dozens of times. I may say every time, we couldn't do good work if we weren't, but that's a matter of temperament, of emotions. Precisely, that's what I was getting at, explained Theron. Well then, hear what I was getting at, she went on. You were talking very loudly here about frauds and hypocrisies and so on a few minutes ago. Now I say that Solzby and I do good and that we're good fellows. Now take him for example. There isn't a better citizen in Alchemung County than he is or a kindlier neighbor or a better or more charitable man. I've known him to stay up the whole winter's night in a poor Irishman stinking and freezing stable, trying to save his cart-horse for him, that had been seized with some sort of fit. The man's whole livelihood and his family's was in that horse and when it died, Solzby bought him another and never even told me about it. Now that I call real piety, if you like. So do I, put in Theron cordially. And this question of fraud pursued his companion. Look at it in the right light. You heard us sing. Well now, I was a singer, of course, but Solzby hardly knew one note from another. I taught him to sing and he went at it patiently and diligently, like a little man. And I invented that scheme of finding tunes which the crowd didn't know and so couldn't break in on and smother. I simply took Chopin. He is full of six, you know. And I got all sorts of melodies out of his waltzes and misercas and nocturnes and so on and I trained Solzby just to sing those sixths so as to make the harmony and there you are. He couldn't sing by himself any more than a crow but he's got those six down to a hair. Now that's machinery, management, organization. We take these tunes written by a Devil Maycare pole who was living with George Sand openly at the time and pass them off on the brethren for hymns. It's a fraud, yes, but it's a good fraud. So they are all good frauds. I say frankly that I'm glad that the change in the chance came to help Solzby and me to be good frauds. And the point is that I'm to be a good fraud too, commented the young minister. She had risen and he got to his feet as well. He instinctively sought for her hand and pressed it warmly and held it in both his with an exuberance of gratitude and liking in his manner. Sister Solzby danced her eyes at him with a saucy little shake of the head. I'm afraid you'll never make a really good fraud, she said. You haven't got it in you. Your intentions are all right but your execution is hopelessly clumsy. I came up to your bedroom there twice while you were sick just to say howdy and you kept your eyes shut and all the while a blind horse could have told me that you were wide awake. I must have thought that it was my wife, said Theron. End of Chapter 17. Chapter 18 of the damnation of Theron Ware. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederick. Part three, Chapter 18. When the lingering dusk finally settled down upon this long summer evening, the train bearing the Solzby's homeward was already some score of miles on its way and the Methodists of Octavius had nearly finished their weekly prayer meeting. After the stirring events of the revival, it was only to be expected that this routine homemade affair should suffer from a reaction. The attendance was larger than usual, perhaps, but the proceedings were spiritless and tame. Neither the pastor nor his wife was present at the beginning and the class leader upon whom control devolved made but feeble headway through the spells of inertia which the hot night air laid upon the gathering. Long pauses intervened between the perfunctory praise offerings and supplications and the hymns weirdly raised from time to time fell again in linger by the wayside. Alice came in just as people were beginning to hope that someone would start the doxology and bring matters to a close. Her appearance apparently suggested this to the class leader for in a few moments the meeting had been dismissed and some of the members on their way out were shaking hands with the minister's wife and expressing the polite hope that he was better. The worried look in her face and the obvious stains of recent tears upon her cheeks imparted an added point of fervor to these inquiries but she replied to all in tones of study tranquility that although not feeling well enough to attend prayer meeting Brother Ware was steadily recovering strength and confidently expected to be in complete health by Sunday. They left her and could hardly wait to get into the vestibule to ask one another in whispers what on earth she could have been crying about. Meanwhile, Brother Ware improved his convalescent state by pacing slowly up and down under the elms on the side of the street opposite the Catholic church. There were no houses here for a block and more. The sidewalk was broken in many places so that passers-by avoided it. The overhanging boughs shrouded it all in obscurity. It was preeminently a place to be alone in. Theron had driven to the depot with his guests an hour before and after a period of pleasant waiting on the platform. He said goodbye to them as the train moved away. Then he turned to Alice who had also accompanied them in the carriage and was conscious of a certain annoyance at her having come. That long familiar talk of the afternoon had given him the feeling that he was entitled to bid farewell to Sister Soulsby to both the Soulsbees by himself. I am afraid folks will think it strange neither of us attending the prayer meeting. He said with a suggestion of reproof in his tone as they left the station yard. If we get back in time, I'll run in for a minute, answered Alice with desolety. No, no, he broke in. I'm not equal to walking so fast. You run on ahead and explain matters and I will come along slowly. The hack we came in is still in the yard, the wife suggested. We could drive home in that. I don't believe it would cost more than a quarter and if you're feeling badly. But I am not feeling badly, Theron replied with frank impatience. Only I feel, I feel that being alone with my thoughts would be good for me. Oh, certainly by all means, Alice had said and turned sharply on her heel. Being alone with these thoughts, Theron strolled aimlessly about and did not think at all. The shadows gathered and fireflies began to disclose their tiny gleams among the shrubbery in the gardens. A lamp-lighter came along and passed him, leaving in his wake a straggling double line of lights, glowing radiantly against the black green of the trees. This recall to Theron that he had heard that the town council lit the lamps by the almanac and economized gas when moonshine was due. The idea struck him as droll and he dwelt upon it in various aspects, smiling at some of its comic possibilities. Looking up in the middle of one of these whimsical conceits, the sportive impulse died suddenly within him. He realized that it was dark and that the massive black bulk reared against the sky on the other side of the road was the Catholic church. The other fact that he had been there walking to and fro for some time was borne in upon him more slowly. He turned and resumed the pacing up and down with a still more leisurely step, musing upon the curious way in which people's minds all unconsciously follow about where instincts and intuitions lead. No doubt it was what Sister Solzby had said about Catholics which had insensibly guided his purposeless stroll in this direction. What a woman that was! Somehow the purport of her talk, striking and even astonishing as he had found it, did not stand out so clearly in his memory as did the image of the woman herself. She must have been extremely pretty once. For that matter, she still was a most attractive looking woman. It had been a genuine pleasure to have her in the house, to see her intelligent responsive face at the table, to have it in one's power to make drafts at will upon the fund of sympathy and appreciation, of facile mirth and ready tenderness in those big eyes of hers. He liked that phrase she had used about herself, a good fellow. It seemed to fit her to a tee. And Solzby was a good fellow too. All at once it occurred to him to wonder whether they were married or not. But really, that was no affair of his, he reflected. A citizen of the intellectual world should be above soiling his thoughts with mean curiosities of that sort. And he drove the impertinent query down again under the surface of his mind. He refused to tolerate as well sundry vagrant imaginings which rose to cluster about and literalized the romance of her youth, which Sister Solzby had so frankly outlined. He would think upon nothing but her as he knew her, the kindly, quick-witted, capable and charming woman who had made such a brilliant break in the monotony of life at that dull parsonage of his. The only genuine happiness in life must consist in having bright, smart, attractive women like that always about. The lights were visible now in the upper rooms of Father Forbes' pastorate across the way. Therein paused for a second to consider whether he wanted to go over and call on the priest. He decided that mentally he was too fagged and flat for such an undertaking. He needed another sort of companionship, some restful, soothing human contact, which should exact nothing from him in return, but just take charge of him with soft, wise words and pleasant plays of fancy and jokes and, and something of the general effect created by Sister Solzby's eyes. The thought expanded itself and he saw that he had never realized before, nay, never dreamt before, what a mighty part the comradeship of talented, sweet-natured and beautiful women must play in the development of genius, the achievement of lofty aims out in the great world of great men, to know such women, ah, that would never fall to his hapless lot. The priest's lamps blinked at him through the trees. He remembered that priests were supposed to be even further removed from the possibilities of such contact than he was himself. His memory reverted to that horribly ugly old woman whom Father Forbes had spoken of as his housekeeper. Life under the same roof with such a hag must be even worse than, worse than. The young minister did not finish the comparison, even in the privacy of his inner soul. He stood instead staring over at the pastorate in a kind of stupor of arrested thought. The figure of a woman passed in view at the nearest window, a tall figure with pale summer clothes of some sort and a broad summer hat, a flitting effect of diaphanous shadow between him and the light which streamed from the casement. Therein felt a little shiver run over him as if the delicate coolness of the changing night air had got into his blood. The window was open and his strained hearing thought it caught the sound of faint laughter. He continued to gaze at the place where the vision had appeared, the while a novel and strange perception unfolded itself in his mind. He had come there in the hope of encountering. Celia Madden. Now that he had looked this fact in the face, there was nothing remarkable about it. In truth it was simplicity itself. He was still a sick man, weak in body, and ejected in spirits. The thought of how unhappy and unstrung he was came to him now with an insistent pathos which brought tears to his eyes. He was only obeying the universal law of nature, the law which prompts the pallid spindling sprout of the potato in the cellar to strive feebly toward the light. From where he stood in the darkness he stretched out his hands in the direction of that open window. The gesture was his confession to the overhanging bows, to the soft night breeze, to the stars above, and it bore him back to something of the confessional's vague and wistful solace. He seemed all ready to have drawn down into his soul a taste of the refreshment it craved. He sighed deeply, and the hot moisture smarted again upon his eyelids, but this time not all in grief. With his tender compassion for himself there mingled now a flutter of buoyant prescience of exquisite expectancy. Fate walked abroad this summer night. The street door of the pastorate opened, and in the flood of illumination which spread suddenly forth over the steps and sidewalk, therein saw again the tall form with the indefinitely light-hued flowing garments and the wide straw hat. He heard a tuneful woman's voice call out, good night, Maggie, and caught no response, saved the abrupt closing of the door, which turned everything black again with a bang. He listened acutely for another instant, and then, with long, noiseless strides, made his way down the deserted side of the street. He moderated his pace as he turned to cross the road at the corner, and then, still masked by the trees, halted altogether in a momentary tumult of apprehension. No, yes, it was all right. The girl sauntered out from the total darkness into the dim starlight of the street, of the open corner. Why, bless me, is that you, Miss Madden? Celia seemed to discern readily enough, through the accents of surprise, the identity of the tall, slim man who addressed her from the shadows. Good evening, Mr. Ware, she said, with prompt affability. I'm so glad to find you out again. We heard you were ill. I have been very ill, responded therein. They shook hands and walked on together. He added, with a quaver in his voice, I am still far from strong. I really ought not to be out at all, but the longing for, well, I couldn't stay in any longer. Even if it kills me, I shall be glad I came out tonight. Oh, we won't talk of killing, said Celia. I don't believe in illnesses myself. But you believe, in collapses of the nerves, put in therein, with gentle sadness, in moral, and spiritual, and mental breakdowns. I remember how I was touched by the way you told me you suffered from them. I had to take what you said then for granted. I had had no experience of it myself. But now I know what it is. He drew a long, pathetic sigh. Oh, don't I know what it is. Don't I know what it is. He repeated gloomily. Come, my friend, cheer up. Celia purred at him in soothing tones. He felt that there was a deliciously feminine and sisterly intuition in her speech, and in the helpful, nurse-like way in which she drew his arm through hers. He leaned upon this support, and was glad of it in every fiber of his being. Do you remember? You promised, the last time I saw you, to play for me, he reminded her. They were passing the little covered, posturing door at the side and rear of the church, as he spoke, and he made a half halt to point the coincidence. Oh, there's no one to blow the organ, she said, divining his suggestion, and I haven't the key, and besides, the organ is too heavy and severe for an invalid. It would overwhelm you tonight. Not as you would know how to play it for me, urged there impensively. I feel as if good music tonight would make me well again. I am really very ill and weak and unhappy. The girl seemed moved by the despairing note in his voice. She invited him, by a sympathetic gesture, to lean even more directly on her arm. Come home with me, and I'll place your pan for you, she said, in compassionate friendliness. He is the real medicine for bruised and wounded nerves. You shall have as much of him as you like. The idea thus unexpectedly thrown forth spread itself like some vast and inexpressibly alluring vista before Theron's imagination. The spice of adventure in it fascinated his mind as well, but for a shrinking moment the flesh was weak. I'm afraid your people would think it's strange, he faltered, and began also to recall that he had some people of his own who would be even more amazed. Nonsense, said Celia, in fine, bold confidence, and with a reassuring pressure on his arm. I allow none of my people to question what I do. They never dream of such a preposterous thing. Besides, you will see none of them. Mrs. Madden is at the seaside, and my father and brother have their own part of the house. I shan't listen for a minute to your not coming. Come, I'm your doctor. I'm to make you well again. There was further conversation, and Theron more or less knew that he was bearing a part in it, but his whole mind seemed concentrated in a sort of delicious terror upon the wonderful experience to which every footstep brought him nearer. His magnetized fancy pictured a great spacious parlor, such as a mansion like the Maddens would of course contain, and there would be a grand piano and lace curtains and paintings in gold frames and a chandelier and velvet easy-chairs, and he would sit in one of these, surrounded by all the luxury of the rich, while Celia played to him. There would be servants about, he presumed, and very likely they would recognize him, and of course they would talk about it to Tom, Dick, and Harry afterward. But he said to himself defiantly that he didn't care. He withdrew his arm from hers as they came upon the well-lighted Main Street. He passed no one who seemed to know him. Presently they came to the Madden place, and Celia, without waiting for the graveled walk, struck obliquely across the lawn. Theron, who had been lagging behind with a certain circumspection, stepped briskly to her side now. Their progress over the soft, close-crop turf in the dark together, with the scent of lilies and perfumed shrubs heavy in the night air, and the majestic bulk of the big silent house rising among the trees before them, gave him a thrilling sense of the glory of individual freedom. I feel like a new man already, he declared, as they swung along on the grass. He breathed a long sigh of content, and drew nearer, so that their shoulders touched now and again as they walked. In a minute more they were standing on the doorstep, and Theron heard the significant jingle of a bunch of keys which his companion was groping for in her elusive pocket. He was conscious of trembling a little at the sound. It seemed that, unlike other people, the maddens did not have their parlor on the ground floor, opening off the front hall. Theron stood in the complete darkness of this hall, till Celia had lit one of several candles, which were in their hand-sticks on a sort of sideboard next to the hat rack. She beckoned him with the gesture of her head, and he followed her up a broad staircase, magnificent in its structural appointments of inlaid woods, and carpeted with what to his feet felt like down. The tiny light which his guide bore before her half revealed, as they passed in their ascent, tall lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of armor and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer wall. Over the stair rail lay an open space of such stately dimensions, bounded by terminal lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle flicker. That the young minister could think of no word but palatial to fit it all. At the head of the flight Celia led the way along a wide corridor to where it ended. Here stretched from side to side, and suspended from broad hoops of a copper-like metal, was a thick curtain of a uniform color which Theron at first thought was green, and then decided must be blue. She pushed its heavy folds aside and unlocked another door. He passed under the curtain behind her and closed the door. The room into which he had made his way was not at all after the fashion of any parlor he had ever seen. In the obscure light it was difficult to tell what it resembled. He made out what he took to be a painter's easel, standing forth independently in the center of things. There were rows of books on rude, low shelves. Against one of the two windows was a big flat writing table, or was it a drawing table, littered with papers. Under the other window was a carpenter's bench, with a large mound of something at one end, covered with a white cloth. On a table behind the easel rose a tall mechanical contrivance, the chief feature of which was a thick upright spiral screw. The floor was of bare wood stained brown. The walls of this queer room had photographs and pictures, taken apparently from illustrated papers, pinned up at random for their only ornament. Celia had lighted three or four other candles on the mantle. She caught the dumbfounded expression, with which her guest was surveying his surroundings, and gave a merry little laugh. This is my workshop, she explained. I keep this for the things I do badly, things I fool with. If I want to paint, or model in clay, or bind books, or write or draw, or turn on the lathe, or do some carpentering, here's where I do it. All the things that make a mess which has to be cleaned up, they are kept out here, because this is as far as the servants are allowed to come. She unlocked still another door as she spoke, a door which was also concealed behind a curtain. Now, she said, holding up the candle so that its reddish flare, rounded with warmth, the creamy fullness of her chin and throat, and glowed upon her hair in a flame of orange light. Now I will show you what is my very own. END OF CHAPTER XIX Theron looked about him with frankly undisguised astonishment. The room in which he found himself was so dark at first, that it yielded little to the eye, and that little seemed altogether beyond his comprehension. His gaze helplessly followed Celia and her candle about, as she busied herself in the work of illumination. When she had finished and pinched out the taper, there were seven lights in the apartment, lights beaming softly through half opaque alternating rectangles of blue and yellow glass. They must be set in some sort of lanterns around against the wall, he thought, but the shape of these he could hardly make out. Gradually his side adapted itself to this subdued light, and he began to see other things. These queer lamps were placed apparently, so as to shed a special radiance upon some statues, which stood in the corners of the chamber, and upon some pictures which were embedded in the walls. Theron noted that the statues, the marble of which lost its aggressive whiteness under the tinted lights, were mostly of naked men and women. The pictures, four or five in number, were all variations of a single theme, the Virgin Mary and the Child. A less untutored vision than his might have caught more swiftly the scheme of colour and line in which these works of art bore their share. The walls of the room were in part flat upright wooden columns, terminating high above in simple capitals, and they were all painted in pale amber and straw and primrose hues, irregularly wavering here and there toward suggestions of white. Between these palasters were broader panels of stamped leather and gently varying shades of peacock blue. These contrasted colours vaguely interwoven mingled in what he could see of the shadowed ceiling far above. They were repeated in the draperies and huge cushions and pillows of the low wide divan which ran about three sides of the room. Even the floor where it revealed itself among the scattered rugs was laid in a mosaic pattern of matched woods which, like the rugs, gave back the same shifting blues and uncertain yellows. The fourth side of the apartment was broken in outline at one end by the door through which they had entered, and at the other by a broad square opening hung with looped black curtains of a thin silken stuff. Between the two apertures rose against the wall what therein took at first glance to be an altar. There were pyramidal rows of tall candles here on either side, each masked with a little silken hood. Below in the centre a shelf-like projection supported what seemed a massive carved casket, and in the beautiful intricacies of this, and the receding canopy of delicate ornamentation which depended above it, the dominant colour was white, deepening away in its shadows, by tenderly minute gradations to the tints which ruled the rest of the room. Celia lighted some of the high thick tapers in these candelabra and opened the top of the casket. Therein saw with surprise that she had uncovered the keyboard of a piano. He viewed with much greater amazement her next proceeding, which was to put a cigarette between her lips, and, bending over one of the candles with it for an instant, turned to him with a filmy, opalescent veil of smoke above her head. Make yourself comfortable anywhere, she said, with a gesture which comprehended all the devans and pillows in the place. Will you smoke? I have never tried it since I was a little boy, said Therein, but I think I could, if you don't mind, I should like to see. Lounging at his ease on the oriental couch, Therein experimented cautiously upon the unaccustomed tobacco, and looked at Celia with what he felt to be the confident quiet of a man of the world. She had thrown aside her hat, and in doing so, had half released some of the heavy strands of hair coiled at the back of her head. His glance instinctively rested upon this wonderful hair of hers. There was no mistaking the sudden fascination its disorder had for his eyes. She stood before him with a cigarette poised daintily between thumb and finger of a shapely hand, and smiled comprehendingly down upon her guest. I suffered the horrors of the damned with this hair of mine when I was a child, she said. I daresay all children have a taste for persecuting red heads, but it's a specialty with Irish children. They get hold somehow of an ancient national superstition, or legend, that red hair was brought into Ireland by the Danes. It's been a term of reproach with us since Brian Buru's time to call a child a Dane. I used to be pursued and baited with it every day of my life, until the one dream of my ambition was to get old enough to be a sister of charity, so that I might hide my hair under one of their big beastly white linen caps. I've got rather away from that ideal sense, I'm afraid. She added, with a droll downward curl of her lip. Your hair is very beautiful, said Theron, in the calm tone of a connoisseur. I like it myself, Celia admitted, and blew a little smoke ring toward him. I've made this whole room to match it, the colors I mean. She explained, in deference, to his uplifted brows. Between us, we make up what Whistler would call a symphony. That reminds me, I was going to play for you. Let me finish the cigarette first. Theron felt grateful for her reticence about the fact that he had laid his own aside. I have never seen a room at all like this, he remarked. You're right, it does fit you perfectly. She nodded her sense of his appreciation. It is what I like, she said. It expresses me. I will not have anything about me, or anybody, either, that I don't like. I suppose if an old Greek could see it, it would make him sick. But it represents what I mean by being a Greek. It is as near as an Irishman can get to it. I remember you're puzzling me by saying that you were a Greek. Seal your laugh and toss the cigarette in the way. I'd puzzle you more, I'm afraid, if I tried to explain to you what I really meant by it. I divide people up into two classes you know, Greeks and Jews. Once you get hold of that principle, all other divisions and classifications, such as by race or language or nationality, seem pure foolishness. It is the only true division there is. It is just as true among Negroes or wild Indians who never heard of Greece or Jerusalem, as it is among white folks. That is the beauty of it. It works everywhere, always. Try it on me, urged Theron, with a twinkling eye. Which am I? Both, said the girl, with a merry nod of her head. But now I'll play. I told you you were to hear Chopin. I prescribe him for you. He is the Greekiest of the Greeks. There was a nation where all the people were artists. Where everybody was an intellectual aristocrat. Where the Philistine was as unknown as extinct as the Dodo. Chopin might have written his music for them. I am interested in Chopin, put in Theron, suddenly recalling sister Solesby's confidences as to the source of her tunes. He lived with, what's his name, George Something. We were speaking about him only this afternoon. Celia looked down into her visitor's face at first inquiringly, then with a latent grin about her lips. Yes, George Something. She said in a tone which mystified him. The Reverend Mr. Ware was sitting up a minute afterward in a ferment of awakened consciousness, that he had never heard the piano played before. After a little he noiselessly rearranged the cushions and settled himself again in a recumbent posture. It was beyond his strength to follow that first impulse and keep his mind abreast with what his ears took in. He sighed and laid back and surrendered his senses to the mere unthinking charm of it all. It was the fourth prelude that was singing in the air about him. A simple, plaintive strain wandering at will over a surface of steady rhythmic movement underneath, always creeping upward through mysteries of sweetness, always sinking again in cadences of semitones. With only a moment's pause there came the seventh waltz, a rich, bold confusion, which yet was not confused. Theron's ears dwelt with eager delight upon the chasing medley of swift, tinkling sounds, but it left his thoughts free. From where he reclined he turned his head to scrutinize one by one the statues in the corners. No doubt they were beautiful. For this was a department in which he was all humility, and one of them, the figure of a broad-browed, stately, though thick waisted woman, bending slightly forward and with both arms broken off, was decently robed from the hips downward. The others were not robed at all. Theron stared at them with the erratic, rippling jangle of the waltz in his ears, and felt that he possessed a new and disturbing conception of what female emancipation meant in these later days. Roving along the wall, his glance rested again upon the largest of the virgin pictures, a full-length figure in sweeping draperies, its radiant, ari-old head, upturned in wrapped adoration, its feet resting on a crescent moon which shone forth in bluish silver through festooned clouds of cherubs. The incongruity between the unashamed statues and the serene incarnation of holy womanhood jarred upon him for the instant, then his mind went to the piano. Without a break the waltz had slowed and expanded into a passage of what might be church music, an exquisitely modulated and gently solemn chant, through which a soft, lingering song roved capriciously, forcing the listener to wonder where it was coming out, even while it caressed and soothed to repose. He looked from the Madonna to Celia, beyond the carelessly drooping braids and coils of hair which blazed between the candles. He could see the outline of her brow and cheek, the noble contour of her lifted chin and full, mottled throat, all pink as the most delicate rose-leafest pink, against the cool lights of the altar-like wall. The sight convicted him in the court of his own soul as a prurient and mean-minded rustic. In the presence of such a face, of such music, there ceased to be any such thing as nudity, and statues no more needed clothes than did those slow, deep, magnificent chords which came now, gravely accumulating their spell upon him. It is all singing, the player called out to him over her shoulder, in a minute of rest. That is what Chopin does, he sings. She began, with an effect of thinking of something else, the sixth nocturne, and Theron at first thought she was not playing anything particular, so deliberately, haltingly, did the chain of charm unwind itself into sequence. Then it came closer to him than the others had done. The dreamy, wistful, meditative beauty of it all, at once oppressed and inspired him. He saw Celia's shoulder sway under the impulse of the rubato license, the privilege to invest each measure, with the stress of the whole, to loiter, to weep, to run and laugh at will, and the music she made spoke to him as with a human voice. There was the wooing sense of roses and moonlight, of perfumes, white skins, alluring languorous eyes, and then, you know this part of course, he heard her say. On the instant they had stepped from the dark, scented starlit garden, where the nightingale sang, into a great cathedral, a somber and lofty anthem arose, and filled the place with the splendor of such dignified pomp of harmony, and such suggestions of measureless choral power and authority that Theron sat up abruptly, then was drawn resistlessly to his feet. He stood motionless in the strange room, feeling most of all that one should kneel to hear such music. This you'll know too, the funeral march from the second sonata, she was saying, before he realized at the end of the other had come, he sank upon the divan again, bending forward and clasping his hands tight around his knees. His heart beat furiously as he listened to the weird medieval processional, with its wild clashing chords held down in the bondage of an orderly sadness. There was a propelling motion in the thing, a sense of being born bodily along, which affected him like dizziness. He breathed hard through the robust portions of stern, vigorous noise, and rocked himself to and fro when, as rosy morn breaks upon a storm-swept night, the drums are silenced for the sweet, comforting strain of solitary melody. The clanging minor harmonies into which the march relapses came to their abrupt end. Therein rose once more and moved with a hesitating step to the piano. I want to rest a little, he said, with his hand on her shoulder. Woo, so do I, exclaimed Celia, letting her hands fall with an exaggerated gesture of weariness. The sonatas take it out of one. They are hideously difficult, you know. They are rarely played. I didn't know, remarked Theron. She seemed not to mind his hand upon her shoulder, and he kept it there. I didn't know anything about music at all. What I do know now is that, that this evening is an event in my life. She looked up at him and smiled. He read unsuspected tendernesses and tolerances of friendship in the depths of her eyes, which emboldened him to stir the fingers of that audacious hand in a lingering caressing trill upon her shoulder. The movement was of the faintest, but having ventured it he drew his hand abruptly away. You are getting on, she said to him. There was an enigmatic twinkle in the smile with which she continued to regard him. We are hellenizing you at a great rate. A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She shifted her eyes toward vacancy with a swift abstracted glance, reflected for a moment, then let a sparkling half-wink and the dimpling beginnings of an almost roguish smile mark her ascent to the conceit, whatever it might be. I will be with you in a moment, he heard her say, and while the words were still in his ears she had risen and passed out of sight through the broad open doorway to the right. The looped curtains fell together behind her. Presently a mellow light spread over their delicately translucent surface, a creamy undulating radiance which gave the effect of moving about the myriad folds of the silk. Therein gazed at these curtains for a little, then straightened his shoulders with a gesture of decision and, turning on his heel, went over and examined the statues in the further corners minutely. If you would like some more, I will play you the Berseuse now. Her voice came to him with a delicious shock. He wheeled around and beheld her standing at the piano with one hand resting, palm upward on the keys. She was facing him. Her tall form was robed now in some shapeless, clinging drapery, lustrous and creamy and exquisitely soft, like the curtains. The wonderful hair hung free and luxuriant about her neck and shoulders, and glowed with an intensity of fiery color which made all the other hues of the room pale and vague. A fillet of faint sky-like blue drew a gracious span through the flame of red above her temples, and from this there rose the gleam of jewels. Her head inclined gently, gravely toward him, with the posture of that armless woman in marble he had been studying, and her brown eyes, regarding him from the shadows, emitted light. It is a lullaby, the only one he wrote, she said, as Theron pale-faced and with tightened lips approached her. No, you mustn't stand there, she added, sinking into the seat before the instrument. Go back and sit where you were. The most perfect of lullabies, with its swaying abandonment to cooing rhythm, ever and again rising in ripples to the point of insisting on something, one knows not what, and then rocking, melting away once more, passed, so to speak, over Theron's head. He leaned back upon the cushions and watched the white, rounded forearm, which the falling folds of this strange, statue-like drapery made bare. There was more that appealed to his mood in the third ballad. It seemed to him that there were words going along with it, incoherent and impulsive yet very earnest words, appealing to him in strenuous argument and persuasion. Each time he almost knew what they said, and strained after their meaning with a passionate desire, and then there would come a kind of cuckoo call, and everything would swing dancing off again into a mockery of inconsequence. Upon the silence there fell the pure, liquid, malifluous melody of a soft-throated woman singing to her lover. It is like Hein, simply a love poem, said the girl, over her shoulder. Theron followed now with all his senses as she carried the ninth nocturne onward. The stormy passage, which she banged finally forth, was in truth a lover's choral, and then the mild placid flow of sweet harmonies into which the furor sank, dying languorously away upon a silence all alive with tender memories of sound. Was that not also a part of love? They sat motionless through a minute, the man on the divan, the girl at the piano, and Theron listened for what he felt must be the audible thumping of his heart. Then, throwing back her head, with upturned face, Celia began what she had withheld for the last, the sixteenth Mazurka. This strange, foreign thing she played with her eyes closed, her head tilted obliquely, so that Theron could see the rose-tinted, beautiful countenance, framed as if asleep in the billowing luxuriance of unloosed, auburn hair. He fancied her, beholding visions as she wrought the music, visions full of barbaric color and romantic forms. As his mind swam along with the gliding, trixy phantom of a tune, it seemed as if he too could see these visions, as if he gazed at them through her eyes. It could not be helped. He lifted himself noiselessly to his feet, and stole with caution toward her. He would hear the rest of this weird, voluptuous fantasy standing thus, so close behind her that he could look down upon her full, uplifted face, so close that, if she moved, that glowing nimbus of hair would touch him. There had been some curious and awkward pauses in this last piece, which Theron, by some side-celebration, had put down to her not watching what her fingers did. There came another of these pauses now, an odd, unaccountable halt in what seemed the middle of everything. He stared intently down upon her statue-esque dreaming face during the hush, and caught his breath as he waited. There fell at last a few faltering ascending notes, making a half-finished strain, and then again there was silence. Celia opened her eyes and poured a direct deep gaze into the face above hers, its pale lips were parted in suspense, and the color had faded from its cheeks. That is the end, she said, and, with a turn of her lithe body, stood swiftly up, even while the echoes of the broken melody seemed panting in the air about her for completion. Theron put his hands to his face, and pressed them tightly against eyes and brows for an instant. Then, throwing them aside with an expansive downward sweep of the arms, and holding them clenched, he returned Celia's glance. It was as if he had never looked into a woman's eyes before. It can't be the end, he heard himself saying, in a low voice charged with deep significance. He held her gaze in the grasp of his, with implacable tenacity, there was a trouble about breathing, and the mosaic floor seemed to stir under his feet. He clung defiantly to the one idea of not releasing her eyes. How could it be the end, he demanded, lifting an uncertain hand to his breast as he spoke, and spreading it there as if to control the tumultuous fluttering of his heart. Things don't end that way. A sharp, blinding spasm of giddiness closed upon and shook him, while the brave words were on his lips. He blinked and tottered under it, as it passed, and then backed humbly to his divan and sat down, gasping a little, and patting his hand on his heart. There was fright written all over his whitened face. We forgot that I am a sick man, he said feebly, answering Celia's look of surprised inquiry with a forced, wan smile. I was afraid my heart had gone wrong. She scrutinized him for a further moment, with growing reassurance in her air. Then, piling up the pillows and cushions behind him for support, for all the world like a big sister again, she stepped into the inner room, and returned with a flagon of quaint shape and a tiny glass. She poured this latter full to the brim of a thick, yellowish aromatic liquid, and gave it him to drink. This benedictine is all I happen to have, she said. Swallow it down, it will do you good. There and obeyed her. It brought tears to his eyes, but, upon reflection, it was grateful and warming. He did feel better almost immediately. A great wave of comfort seemed to infold him, as he settled himself back on the divan. For that one flashing instant, he had thought that he was dying. He drew a long, grateful breath of his heart, dying. He drew a long, grateful breath of relief, and smiled his content. Celia had seated herself beside him, a little away. She sat with her head against the wall, and one foot curled under her, and almost faced him. I daresay we forced the pace a little, she remarked, after a pause, looking down at the floor, with the puckers of a ruminating amusement playing in the corners of her mouth. It doesn't do for a man to get to be Greek all of a sudden. He must work along up to it gradually. He remembered the music. Oh, if I only knew how to tell you, he murmured ecstatically. What a revelation your playing has been to me. I had never imagined anything like it. I shall think of it to my dying day. He began to remember as well the spirit that was in the air when the music ended. The details of what he had felt, and said, rose vaguely in his mind. Pondering them, his eye roved past Celia's white-robed figure to the broad, open doorway beyond. The curtains behind which she had disappeared were again parted and fastened back. A dim light was burning within, out of sight, and its faint illumination disclosed a room filled with white marbles, white silks, white draperies of varying sorts, which shaped themselves, as he looked, into the canopy and trappings of an extravagantly oversized and sumptuous bed. He looked away again. I wish you would tell me what you really mean by that Greek idea of yours, he said, with the abruptness of confusion. Celia did not display much enthusiasm in the tone of her answer. Oh, she said almost indifferently, lots of things, absolute freedom from moral bug-bears for one thing, the recognition that beauty is the only thing in life that is worthwhile, the courage to kick out of one's life everything that isn't worthwhile, and so on. But, said Theron, watching the mingled delicacy and power of the bared arm and the shapely grace of the hand which she had lifted to her face, I am going to get you to teach it all to me. The memories began crowding in upon him now, and the baffling note upon which the Mazurka had stopped short chimed like a tuning fork in his ears. I want to be a Greek myself, if you're one. I want to get as close to you, to your ideal, that is, as I can. You open up to me a whole world that I had not even dreamed existed. We swore our friendship long ago, you know, and now, after tonight, you and the music have decided me, I am going to put the things out of my life that are not worthwhile. Only you must help me, you must tell me how to begin. He looked up as he spoke, to enforce the almost tender entreaty of his words. The spectacle of a yawn only fractionally concealed behind those talented fingers chilled his soft speech and sent a flush over his face. He rose on the instant. Celia was nothing abashed at his discovery. She laughed gaily in confession of her fault, and held her hand out to let him help her disentangle her foot from her draperies and get off the devan. It seemed to be her meaning that he should continue holding her hand after she was also standing. You forgive me, don't you? She urged, smilingly. Chopin always first excites me, then sends me to sleep. You see how you sleep tonight. The brown, velvety eyes rested upon him, from under their heavy lids with a languorous kindness. Her warm, large palm clasped his in frank liking. I don't want to sleep at all, Mr. Ware was impelled to say. I want to lie awake and think about everything all over again. She smiled drowsily. Are you sure you feel strong enough to walk home? Yes, he replied, with a lingering dilatory note, which deepened upon reflection into a sigh. Oh, yes. He followed her and her candle down the magnificent stairway again. She blew the light out in the hall and, opening the front door, stood with him for a silent moment on the threshold. Then they shook hands once more, and with a whispered good night, parted. Celia, returning to the blue and yellow room, lighted a cigarette and helped herself to some benedictine in the glass which Theron had used. She looked meditatively at this little glass for a moment, turning it about in her fingers with a smile. The smile warmed itself suddenly into a joyous laugh. She tossed the glass aside and, holding out her flowing skirts with both hands, executed a swinging pirouette in front of the gravely beautiful statue of the armless woman.