Only an Incident Part 15

He stopped, and she came toward him holding out her hand. "I want to thank you for your kindness of the other night. I believe I was ungrateful and perhaps rude at the time, and I have not seen you since to apologize."

"Pray do not speak of it!" said Denham, flus.h.i.+ng a little as he took her hand. "There was no occasion whatever for grat.i.tude, and therefore no possible lack of it. I trust you are quite well now."

"There _was_ occasion for grat.i.tude," persisted Gerald, "or at least for an acknowledgment of your kindness, and it is because I am ashamed of my remissness that I take this first opportunity to thank you."

"You embarra.s.s me," said Denham, laughingly. "I am not at all accustomed to having public rest.i.tution made me in this manner, and especially for purely imaginary slights. But may I not be permitted now--as a sort of reward if you will--to inquire if you have quite recovered?"

"At least I have sufficiently recovered to retract my disbelief in kitchen soap, and--and in your skill," she added, with a little visible effort.

"You honor us above our deserts,--the soap and me," answered Denham, playfully. "I don't know how deleteriously it may affect the soap, but as for me I feel myself growing alarmingly conceited. So good-night."

"What a very elaborate apology," said De Forest, as Denham went out. "If the offence were at all proportionate, I tremble to think of the enormity of your crime; or is it because he is a Reverend, that you demean yourself so humbly before him?"

Halloway was still hunting for his hat in the hall, and could scarcely help overhearing De Forest's remark and Gerald's answer.

"I demean myself before n.o.body in seeking to make amends for a previous neglect. The humiliation is in the misconduct, not in the confession of it; and whether I owed the apology to Mr. Halloway or to a beggar in the street, I should have made it quite the same, not at all for sake of his pardon, but simply for sake of clearing my own conscience."

"Not at all for sake of my pardon," said Denham, as he strode on toward the church, with the uncomfortable sensation of having been an involuntary eavesdropper. "It is fortunate that my conceit was only veneered on."

The following Sunday Gerald was in church both morning and evening, sitting in Phebe's accustomed place. She was one of those noticeable presences impossible to overlook, and as Denham mounted into the pulpit he felt as if he were preaching solely to her, or rather as if hers were the only criticism he feared in all the friendly congregation. He was annoyed that he should feel so, and quite conscious at the same time that he was far from doing his best, and once or twice he caught a flash in the serious eyes fastened on his face, that seemed to say she knew this last fact too, and was impatient with him for it. What excuse had any one, in Gerald's eyes, for not doing his best always? De Forest was with her in the evening, and as Halloway came out of the vestry after service, he found himself directly behind them.

"He's not a mighty orator," De Forest was saying with his cynical drawl.

"I doubt if he is destined to be one of the pillars or even one of the cus.h.i.+ons of the church."

"He was not doing his best to-night," answered Gerald.

"Thank you," said Halloway, coming quickly to her side, anxious to avoid further eavesdropping. "Thank you--I mean for thinking I might do better."

"That is not much to be grateful for, I am afraid," replied Gerald, "since it implies, you know, that you have not done well."

"I hope you like uncompromising truth, Mr. Halloway," said De Forest, leaning forward to look at him across Gerald. "It's the only kind Miss Vernor deals in."

"I prefer it infinitely to the most flattering falsehood imaginable,"

answered Denham.

"I believe clergymen are usually the last people to hear the truth about themselves," continued Gerald. "Their position at the head of a community, pre-supposes their capability for the office, and naturally places them outside of the criticism of those under their immediate charge, who are nevertheless just the ones best qualified to judge them.

But of course scholars may not teach the teacher."

"What an invaluable opening for you who are _not_ one of Mr. Halloway's flock," said De Forest, "to undertake to remedy the deficiency, and to be in yourself a whole critical public to him, a licensed _Free Press_ as it were, pointing out all his errors with the most unhesitating frankness and unsparing perspicuity!"

"Do you think your love of truth would hold out long under such a crucial test?" asked Gerald, turning quite seriously to Denham. The moonlight shone full on her clear-cut, cameo-like face. Her eyes, with their shadowy fringe, looked deeper and blacker than midnight. It did not seem possible that truth spoken by her could be any thing but beautiful too.

Denham smiled down at her seriousness.

"Try me."

"Well, then, it seems to me you do not often enough try to do your best.

You are contented to do well, and not ambitious to do better. You are quite satisfied, so I think, if your sermons are good enough to please generally, instead of seeking to raise your standard all the time by hard effort toward improvement, and I doubt, therefore, if at the end of a year your sermons will show any marked change from what they are to-day.

Am I too hard?"

"You are very just," answered Denham, pleasantly, though the blood mounted to his face. "You have found out my weak spot. I confess I am not ambitious. I aspire to no greatness of any kind."

"You have discovered the secret of contentment," said De Forest, with effusive approbation. "I am glad to have met you, Mr. Halloway. You are the one happy man I know."

"The secret of contentment?" repeated Gerald. "Say rather the principle of all stagnation, mental and spiritual. Not to aspire to become greater than one _can_ be is to fall short of becoming all that one _may_ be; to be satisfied with one's powers is to dwarf them hopelessly."

"A powerful argument against conceit," reflected De Forest. "Still, upon my word, I think I would as lief be conceited in every pore as eternally in a state of dissatisfaction with myself about every thing."

"It is well, above all, I think, to have a just appreciation of one's own powers or lack of powers," said Denham, slowly. "Ambition, without the corresponding strength to gratify it, is a cruel taskmaster."

"How can you tell, till you have tried, that there is no corresponding strength?" asked Gerald, turning full upon him again. How marvellously expressive her face was, with its earnest eyes and mobile mouth! "If I were a man,--and great heavens! how I wish I were one!--I would create the strength if it were not there of itself. I would force myself upward.

I would never rest till I had become something more than nature originally made me."

"Then Heaven be thanked, who has spared us the monstrosity you would have developed into under the harrowing circ.u.mstances of a reversal of your s.e.x," said De Forest, devoutly.

"I was always glad you were a woman. Now I am positively aglow with grat.i.tude for it."

Denham was silent. They had reached Mrs. Lane's now, and Gerald and her cavalier paused.

"I have not hurt you, Mr. Halloway, have I?" said Gerald, more gently. "I know I sometimes speak strongly where I am least qualified to do so."

"A very womanly trait," put in De Forest. "Don't apologize for your one redeeming weakness."

"No, you have not hurt me," said Denham, in a low voice. "I hope you have done me good." And without adding even a good-night or a message for Phebe, he lifted his hat and crossed over to the rectory. His sister was not there as he entered her sitting-room, and throwing himself down on the sofa, clasped his hands over his forehead and stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling. She had been sitting with Phebe while the Lane household went to its various churches, Phebe was tired, in consequence of the entire population of Joppa having run in to ask after her between services "on their way home," and she was not talking much. But only to look up and smile into Soeur Angelique's sweet face was pleasure enough for the girl, and she lay very quietly, holding a rose that Denham had sent her over by his sister, and feeling supremely contented.

"How would you like me to read to you?" asked Mrs. Whittridge at last, taking up a book. "Shall I try it?"

"No, thank you. I am afraid my thoughts would be louder than your words, and I should be listening to them and losing what you are saying."

"And, pray, what are these remarkably noisy thoughts?" asked the lady.

"Let me listen and hear them too."

"I don't think I could say just what they are," replied Phebe, dreamily.

"They are running through my head more like indistinct music than like real thoughts. And I never was clever at saying things, you know. But, oh! I do feel very happy."

"You look so," said Soeur Angelique, tenderly. "You poor little one, is it just the getting well again that makes you so?"

Phebe flushed ever so slightly. "I don't know just what it is," she answered, lifting the rose to her face. "Perhaps it is only the listening to that indistinct music. It seems to have put all my soul in tune. Oh, dear Mrs. Whittridge, what a beautiful world this is, when only there are no discords in one's own heart!"

A day or two went by, and Phebe, though rapidly convalescing, was still a prisoner to her room.

"You're missing a lot of fun," said Bell Masters, sympathetically, as she bustled in to see her one morning, and sat down by the window, pus.h.i.+ng back the curtain so that she could look out into the street and nod to pa.s.sers as she talked. "There's no end going on. Dear me, it's a shame to come to you empty-handed, Phebe. I had two or three rosebuds for you,--beauties they were too,--but the fact is I gave them away piecemeal as I came along, and I haven't one left. It seemed as if I met every man there was this morning. How soon do you think you'll be out again?"

"I don't know," answered Phebe, pus.h.i.+ng a box of bonbons within reach of Bell's easy-going fingers. "I think I might go down-stairs now, but Dr.

Dennis won't let me."

"Too bad. You'll miss d.i.c.k's coming of age, won't you? There are to be high doings. Mr. Hardcastle is too mysterious and pompous to live.

One can't get any thing out of him but just 'My son d.i.c.k doesn't come of age but once' (as if we thought it was a yearly occurrence), 'and we don't celebrate it but once.' But I got hold of d.i.c.k privately and wheedled it out of him in less than no time with a piece of soft gingerbread. It's to be something _stunning_. His father wanted to do it up in English style, dinner to the tenantry, and all that sort of thing, only unluckily there wasn't any tenantry, and he had to abandon the benevolent role and take to a jollier one. He won't show off as well, but we'll have a deal more fun. It's to be a sort of royal picnic, but in the evening, mind,--wasn't that a brilliant idea for the old gentleman? We are all to go up in boats, and there are to be great rafts with blazing torches, and a supper in the woods grander than any of Mrs. Upjohn's, and bonfires, and the band from Galilee, and bouquets for the ladies, and I don't know what not, and best of all, unlimited opportunities for flirting. It's to be _the_ affair of this and every other season past or future. It's a crying shame you can't go."

"Oh! how I wish I could!" sighed poor Phebe.