The Golden House

XVI

When Father Damon parted from Edith he seemed to himself strengthened in his spirit. His momentary outburst had shown him where he stood-the strength of his fearful temptation. To see it was to be able to conquer it. He would humiliate himself; he would scourge himself; he would fast and pray; he would throw himself more unreservedly into the service of his Master. He had been too compromising with sin and sinners, and with his own weakness and sin, the worst of all.

The priest walked swiftly through the wintry streets, welcoming as a sort of penance the biting frost which burned his face and penetrated his garments. He little heeded the passers in the streets, those who hurried or those who loitered, only, if he met or passed a woman or a group of girls, he instinctively drew himself away and walked more rapidly. He strode on uncompromisingly, and his clean-shaved face was set in rigid lines. Those who saw him pass would have said that there went an ascetic bent on judgment. Many who did know him, and who ordinarily would have saluted him, sure of a friendly greeting, were repelled by his stern face and determined air, and made no sign. The father had something on his mind.

As he turned into Rivington Street there approached him from the opposite direction a girl, walking slowly and undecidedly. When he came near her she looked up, with an appealing recognition. In a flash of the quick passing he thought he knew her—a girl who had attended his mission and whom he had not seen for several months-but he made no sign and passed on.

“Father Damon!”

He turned about short at the sound of the weak, pleading voice, but with no relaxation of his severe, introverted mood. “Well?”

It was the girl he remembered. She wore a dress of silk that had once been fine, and over it an ample cloak that had quite lost its freshness, and a hat still gay with cheap flowers. Her face, which had a sweet and almost innocent expression, was drawn and anxious. The eyes were those of a troubled and hunted animal.

“I thought,” she said, hesitatingly, “you didn't know me.”

“Yes, I know you. Why haven't you been at the mission lately?”

“I couldn't come. I—”

“I'm afraid you have fallen into bad ways.”

She did not answer immediately. She looked away, and, still avoiding his gaze, said, timidly: “I thought I would tell you, Father Damon, that I'm—that I'm in trouble. I don't know what to do.”

“Have you repented of your sin?” asked he, with a little softening of his tone. “Did you want to come to me for help?”

“He's deserted me,” said the girl, looking down, absorbed in her own misery, and not heeding his question.

“Ah, so that is what you are sorry for?” The severe, reproving tone had come back to his voice.

“And they don't want me in the shop any more.”

The priest hesitated. Was he always to preach against sin, to strive to extirpate it, and yet always to make it easy for the sinner? This girl must realize her guilt before he could do her any good. “Are you sorry for what you have done?”

“Yes, I'm sorry,” she replied. Wasn't to be in deep trouble to be sorry? And then she looked up, and continued with the thought in her mind, “I didn't know who else to go to.”

“Well, my child, if you are sorry, and want to lead a different life, come to me at the mission and I will try to help you.”

The priest, with a not unkindly good-by, passed on. The girl stood a moment irresolute, and then went on her way heavily and despondent. What good would it do her to go to the mission now?

Three days later Dr. Leigh was waiting at the mission chapel to speak with the rector after the vesper service. He came out pale and weary, and the doctor hesitated to make known her errand when she saw how exhausted he was.

“Did you wish me for anything?” he asked, after the rather forced greeting.

“If you feel able. There is a girl at the Woman's Hospital who wants to see you.”

“Who is it?”

“It is the girl you saw on the street the other afternoon; she said she had spoken to you.”

“She promised to come to the mission.”

“She couldn't. I met the poor thing the same afternoon. She looked so aimless and forlorn that, though I did not remember her at first, I thought she might be ill, and spoke to her, and asked her what was the matter. At first she said nothing except that she was out of work and felt miserable; but the next moment she broke down completely, and said she hadn't a friend in the world.”

“Poor thing!” said the priest, with a pang of self-reproach.

“There was nothing to do but to take her to the hospital, and there she has been.”

“Is she very ill?”

“She may live, the house surgeon says. But she was very weak for such a trial.”

Little more was said as they walked along, and when they reached the hospital, Father Damon was shown without delay into the ward where the sick girl lay. Dr. Leigh turned back from the door, and the nurse took him to the bedside. She lay quite still in her cot, wan and feeble, with every sign of having encountered a supreme peril.

She turned her head on the low pillow as Father Damon spoke, saying he was very glad he could come to her, and hoped she was feeling better.

“I knew you would come,” she said, feebly. “The nurse says I'm better. But I wanted to tell you—” And she stopped.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “The Lord is very good. He will forgive all your sins now, if you repent and trust Him.”

“I hope—” she began. “I'm so weak. If I don't live I want him to know.”

“Want whom to know?” asked the father, bending over her.

She signed for him to come closer, and then whispered a name.

“Only if I never see him again, if you see him, you will tell him that I was always true to him. He said such hard words. I was always true.”

“I promise,” said the father, much moved. “But now, my child, you ought to think of yourself, of your—”

“He is dead. Didn't they tell you? There is nothing any more.”

The nurse approached with a warning gesture that the interview was too prolonged.

Father Damon knelt for a moment by the bedside, uttering a hardly articulate prayer. The girl's eyes were closed. When he rose she opened them with a look of gratitude, and with the sign of blessing he turned away.

He intended to hasten from the house. He wanted to be alone. His trouble seemed to him greater than that of the suffering girl. What had he done? What was he in thought better than she? Was this intruding human element always to cross the purpose of his spiritual life?

As he was passing through the wide hallway the door of the reception-room was open, and he saw Dr. Leigh seated at the table, with a piece of work in her hands. She looked up, and stopped him with an unspoken inquiry in her face. It was only civil to pause a moment and tell her about the patient, and as he stepped within the room she rose.

“You should rest a moment, Father Damon. I know what these scenes are.”

Yielding weakly, as he knew, he took the offered chair. But he raised his hand in refusal of the glass of wine which she had ready for him on the table, and offered before he could speak.

“But you must,” she said, with a smile. “It is the doctor's prescription.”

She did not look like a doctor. She had laid aside the dusty walking-dress, the business-jacket, the ugly little hat of felt, the battered reticule. In her simple house costume she was the woman, homelike, sympathetic, gentle, with the everlasting appeal of the strong feminine nature. It was not a temptress who stood before him, but a helpful woman, in whose kind eyes-how beautiful they were in this moment of sympathy—there was trust—and rest—and peace.

“So,” she said, when he had taken the much-needed draught; “in the hospital you must obey the rules, one of which is to let no one sink in exhaustion.”

She had taken her seat now, and resumed her work. Father Damon was looking at her, seeing the woman, perhaps, as he never had seen her before, a certain charm in her quiet figure and modest self-possession, while the thought of her life, of her labors, as he had seen her now for months and months of entire sacrifice of self, surged through his brain in a whirl of emotion that seemed sweeping him away. But when he spoke it was of the girl, and as if to himself.

“I was sorry to let her go that day. Friendless, I should have known. I did know. I should have felt. You—”

“No,” she said, gently, interrupting him; “that was my business. You should not accuse yourself. It was a physician's business.”

“Yes, a physician—the great Physician. The Master never let the sin hinder his compassion for the sinner.”

To this she could make no reply. Presently she looked up and said: “But I am sure your visit was a great comfort to the poor girl! She was very eager to see you.”

“I do not know.”

His air was still abstracted. He was hardly thinking of the girl, after all, but of himself, of the woman who sat before him. It seemed to him that he would have given the world to escape—to fly from her, to fly from himself. Some invisible force held him—a strong, new, and yet not new, emotion, a power that seemed to clutch his very life. He could not think clearly about it. In all his discipline, in his consecration, in his vows of separation from the world, there seemed to have been no shield prepared for this. The human asserted itself, and came in, overwhelming his guards and his barriers like a strong flood in the spring-time of the year, breaking down all artificial contrivances. “They reckon ill who leave me out,” is the everlasting cry of the human heart, the great passion of life, incarnate in the first man and the first woman.

With a supreme effort of his iron will—is the Will, after all, stronger than Love?—Father Damona rose. He stretched out his hand to say farewell. She also stood, and she felt the hand tremble that held hers.

“God bless you!” he said. “You are so good.”

He was going. He took her other hand, and was looking down upon her face. She looked up, and their eyes met. It was for an instant, a flash, glance for glance, as swift as the stab of daggers.

All the power of heaven and earth could not recall that glance nor undo its revelations. The man and the woman stood face to face revealed.

He bent down towards her face. Affrighted by his passion, scarcely able to stand in her sudden emotion, she started back. The action, the instant of time, recalled him to himself. He dropped her hands, and was gone. And the woman, her knees refusing any longer to support her, sank into a chair, helpless, and saw him go, and knew in that moment the height of a woman's joy, the depth of a woman's despair.

It had come to her! Steeled by her science, shielded by her philanthropy, schooled in indifference to love, it had come to her! And it was hopeless. Hopeless? It was absurd. Her life was determined. In no event could it be in harmony with his opinions, with his religion, which was dearer to him than life. There was a great gulf between them which she could not pass unless she ceased to be herself. And he? A severe priest! Vowed and consecrated against human passion! What a government of the world—if there were any government—that could permit such a thing! It was terrible.

And yet she was loved! That sang in her heart with all the pain, with all the despair. And with it all was a great pity for him, alone, gone into the wilderness, as it would seem to him, to struggle with his fierce temptation.

It had come on darker as she sat there. The lamps were lighted, and she was reminded of some visits she must make. She went, mechanically, to her room to prepare for going. The old jacket, which she took up, did look rather rusty. She went to the press—it was not much of a wardrobe—and put on the one that was reserved for holidays. And the hat? Her friends had often joked her about the hat, but now for the first time she seemed to see it as it might appear to others. As she held it in her hand, and then put it on before the mirror, she smiled a little, faintly, at its appearance. And then she laid it aside for her better hat. She never had been so long in dressing before. And in the evening, too, when it could make no difference! It might, after all, be a little more cheerful for her forlorn patients. Perhaps she was not conscious that she was making selections, that she was paying a little more attention to her toilet than usual. Perhaps it was only the woman who was conscious that she was loved.

It would be difficult to say what emotion was uppermost in the mind of Father Damon as he left the house—mortification, contempt of himself, or horror. But there was a sense of escape, of physical escape, and the imperative need of it, that quickened his steps almost into a run. In the increasing dark, at this hour, in this quarter of the town, there were comparatively few whose observation of him would recall him to himself. He thought only of escape, and of escape from that quarter of the city that was the witness of his labors and his failure. For the moment to get away from this was the one necessity, and without reasoning in the matter, only feeling, he was hurrying, stumbling in his haste, northward. Before he went to the hospital he had been tired, physically weary. He was scarcely conscious of it now; indeed, his body, his hated body, seemed lighter, and the dominant spirit now awakened to contempt of it had a certain pleasure in testing it, in drawing upon its vitality, to the point of exhaustion if possible. It should be seen which was master. His rapid pace presently brought him into one of the great avenues leading to Harlem. That was the direction he wished to go. That was where he knew, without making any decision, he must go, to the haven of the house of his order, on the heights beyond Harlem. A train was just clattering along on the elevated road above him. He could see the faces at the windows, the black masses crowding the platforms. It went pounding by as if it were freight from another world. He was in haste, but haste to escape from himself. That way, bearing him along with other people, and in the moving world, was to bring him in touch with humanity again, and so with what was most hateful in himself. He must be alone. But there was a deeper psychological reason than that for walking, instead of availing himself of the swiftest method of escape. He was not fleeing from justice or pursuit. When the mind is in torture and the spirit is torn, the instinctive effort is to bodily activity, to force physical exertion, as if there must be compensation for the mental strain in the weariness of nature. The priest obeyed this instinct, as if it were possible to walk away from himself, and went on, at first with almost no sense of weariness.

And the shame! He could not bear to be observed. It seemed to him that every one would see in his face that he was a recreant priest, perjured and forsworn. And so great had been his spiritual pride! So removed he had deemed himself from the weakness of humanity! And he had yielded at the first temptation, and the commonest of all temptations! Thank God, he had not quite yielded. He had fled. And yet, how would it have been if Ruth Leigh had not had a moment of reserve, of prudent repulsion! He groaned in anguish. The sin was in the intention. It was no merit of his that he had not with a kiss of passion broken his word to his Lord and lost his soul.

It was remorse that was driving him along the avenue; no room for any other thought yet, or feeling. Perhaps it is true in these days that the old-fashioned torture known as remorse is rarely experienced except under the name of detection. But it was a reality with this highly sensitive nature, with this conscience educated to the finest edge of feeling. The world need never know his moment's weakness; Ruth Leigh he could trust as he would have trusted his own sister to guard his honor—that was all over—never, he was sure, would she even by a look recall the past; but he knew how he had fallen, and the awful measure of his lapse from loyalty to his Master. And how could he ever again stand before erring, sinful men and women and speak about that purity which he had violated? Could repentance, confession, penitence, wipe away this stain?

As he went on, his mind in a whirl of humiliation, self-accusation, and contempt, at length he began to be conscious of physical weariness. Except the biscuit and the glass of wine at the hospital, he had taken nothing since his light luncheon. When he came to the Harlem Bridge he was compelled to rest. Leaning against one of the timbers and half seated, with the softened roar of the city in his ears, the lights gleaming on the heights, the river flowing dark and silent, he began to be conscious of his situation. Yes, he was very tired. It seemed difficult to go on without help of some sort. At length he crossed the bridge. Lights were gleaming from the saloons along the street. He paused in front of one, irresolute. Food he could not taste, but something he must have to carry him on. But no, that would not do; he could not enter that in his priest's garb. He dragged himself along until he came to a drug-shop, the modern saloon of the respectably virtuous. That he entered, and sat down on a stool by the soda-water counter. The expectant clerk stared at him while waiting the order, his hand tentatively seeking one of the faucets of refreshment.

“I feel a little feverish,” said the father. “You may give me five grains of quinine in whisky.”

“That'll put you all right,” said the boy as he handed him the mixture. “It's all the go now.”

It seemed to revive him, and he went out and walked on towards the heights. Somehow, seeing this boy, coming back to common life, perhaps the strong and unaccustomed stimulant, gave a new shade to his thoughts. He was safe. Presently he would be at the Retreat. He would rest, and then gird up his loins and face life again. The mood lasted for some time. And when the sense of physical weariness came back, that seemed to dull the acuteness of his spiritual torment. It was late when he reached the house and rang the night-bell. No one of the brothers was up except Father Monies, and it was he who came to the door.

“You! So late! Is anything the matter?”

“I needed to come,” the father said, simply, and he grasped the door-post, steadying himself as he came in.

“You look like a ghost.”

“Yes. I'm tired. I walked.”

“Walked? From Rivington Street?”

“Nearly. I felt like it.”

“It's most imprudent. You dined first?”

“I wasn't hungry.”

“But you must have something at once.” And Father Monies hurried away, heated some bouillon by a spirit-lamp, and brought it, with bread, and set it before his unexpected guest.

“There, eat that, and get to bed as soon as you can. It was great nonsense.”

And Father Damon obeyed. Indeed, he was too exhausted to talk.