The Voice

CHAPTER IV

When Philippa Roberts had fled out into the night for help, her father and old Hannah were too alarmed to notice her absence. They went hurrying back and forth with this remedy and that. Again and again they were ready to give up; once Henry Roberts said, "He is gone!" and once Hannah began to cry, and said, "Poor lad, poor boy!" Yet each made one more effort, their shadows looming gigantic against the walls or stretching across the ceiling, bending and sinking as they knelt beside the poor young man, who by that time was beyond speech. So the struggle went on. But little by little life began to gain. John Fenn's eyes opened. Then he smiled. Then he said something-they could not hear what.

"Bless the Lord!" said Henry Roberts.

"He's asking for Philly," said old Hannah. By the time the doctor and Philippa reached the house the shadow of death had lifted.

"It must have been poison," Mr. Roberts told the doctor. "When he gets over it he will tell us what it was."

"I don't believe he will," said William King; he was holding Fenn's wrist between his firm fingers, and then he turned up a fluttering eyelid and looked at the still dulled eye.

Philippa, kneeling on the other side of John Fenn, said loudly: "I will tell HIM—and perhaps God will forgive me."

The doctor, glancing up at her, said: "No, you won't—anyhow at present. Take that child up-stairs, Hannah," he commanded, "and put her to bed. She ran all the way to Old Chester to get me," he explained to Henry Roberts.

Before he left the house that night he sat for a few minutes at Philippa's bedside. "My dear little girl," he said, in his kind, sensible voice, "the best thing to do is to forget it. It was a foolish thing to do—that charm business; but happily no harm is done. Now say nothing about it, and never do it again."

Philippa turned her shuddering face away. "Do it again? OH!"

As William King went home he apologized to Jinny for that cut across her flanks by hanging the reins on the overhead hook, and letting her plod along at her own pleasure. He was saying to himself that he hoped he had done right to tell the child to hold her tongue. "It was just tomfoolery," he argued; "there was no sin about it, so confession wouldn't do her any good; on the contrary, it would hurt a girl's self-respect to have a man know she had tried to catch him. But what a donkey he was not to see.... Oh yes; I'm sure I'm right," said William King. "I wonder how Dr. Lavendar would look at it?"

Philippa, at any rate, was satisfied with his advice. Perhaps the story of what she had done might have broken from her pale lips had her father asked any questions; but Henry Roberts had retreated into troubled silence. There had been one wonderful moment when he thought that at last his faith was to be justified and by the unbeliever himself! and he had cried out, with a passion deferred for more than thirty years: "The VOICE!" But behold, the voice, babbling and meaningless, was nothing but sickness. No one could guess what the shock of that disappointment was. He was not able even to speak of it. So Philippa was asked no awkward questions, and her self-knowledge burned deep into her heart.

In the next few days, while the minister was slowly recovering in the great four-poster in Henry Roberts's guest-room, she listened to Hannah's speculations as to the cause of his attack, and expressed no opinion. She was dumb when John Fenn tried to tell her how grateful he was to her for that terrible run through the darkness for his sake.

"You should not be grateful," she said, at last, in a whisper.

But he was grateful; and, furthermore, he was very happy in those days of slow recovery. The fact was that that night, when he had been so near death, he had heard Philippa, in his first dim moments of returning consciousness, stammering out those distracted words: "Perhaps God will forgive me." To John Fenn those words meant the crowning of all his efforts: she had repented!

"Truly," he said, lying very white and feeble on his pillow and looking into Philly's face when she brought him his gruel, "truly,

"He moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform!"

The "mysterious way" was the befalling of that terrible illness in Henry Roberts's house, so that Philippa should be impressed by it. "If my affliction has been blessed to any one else, I am glad to have suffered it," he said.

Philippa silently put a spoonful of gruel between his lips; he swallowed it as quickly as he could. "I heard you call upon God for forgiveness; the Lord is merciful and gracious!"

Philly said, very low, "Yes; oh YES." So John Fenn thanked God and took his gruel, and thought it was very good. He thought, also, that Miss Philippa was very good to be so good to him. In those next few days, before he was strong enough to be moved back to his own house, he thought more of her goodness and less of her salvation. It was then that he had his great moment, his revealing moment! All of a sudden, at the touch of Life, his honest artificiality had dropped from him, and he knew that he had never before known anything worth knowing! He knew he was in love. He knew it when he realized that he was not in the least troubled about her soul. "That is what she meant!" he thought; "she wanted me to care for her, before I cared for her soul." He was so simple in his acceptance of the revelation that she loved him, that when he went to ask her to be his wife the blow of her reply almost knocked him back into his ministerial affectations:

"No."

When John Fenn got home that evening he went into his study and shut the door. Mary came and pounded on it, but he only said, in a muffled voice:

"No, Mary. Not now. Go away."

He was praying for resignation to what he told himself was the will of God. "The Lord is unwilling that my thoughts should be diverted from His service by my own personal happiness." Then he tried to put his thoughts on that service by deciding upon a text for his next sermon. But the texts which suggested themselves were not steadying to his bewildered mind:

"LOVE ONE ANOTHER." ("I certainly thought she loved me.")

"MARVEL NOT, MY BRETHREN, IF THE WORLD HATE YOU." ("I am, perhaps, personally unattractive to her; and yet I wonder why?") He was not a conceited man; but, like all his sex, he really did "marvel" a little at the lack of feminine appreciation. He marveled so much that a week later he took Mary and walked out to Mr. Roberts's house. This time Mary, to her disgust, was left with Miss Philly's father, while her brother and Miss Philly walked in the frosted garden. Later, when that walk was over, and the little sister trudged along at John Fenn's side in the direction of Perryville, she was very fretful because he would not talk to her. He was occupied, poor boy, in trying again not to "marvel," and to be submissive to the divine will.

After that, for several months, he refused Mary's plea to be taken to visit Miss Philly. He had, he told himself, "submitted"; but submission left him very melancholy and solemn, and also a little resentful; indeed, he was so low in his mind, that once he threw out a bitter hint to Dr. Lavendar,—who, according to his wont, put two and two together.

"Men in our profession, sir," said John Fenn, "must not expect personal happiness."

"Well," said Dr. Lavendar, meditatively, "perhaps if we don't expect it, the surprise of getting it makes it all the better. I expected it; but I've exceeded my expectations!"

"But you are not married," the young man said, impulsively.

Dr. Lavendar's face changed; "I hope you will marry, Fenn," he said, quietly. At which John Fenn said, "I am married to my profession; that is enough for any minister."

"You'll find your profession a mighty poor housekeeper," said Dr. Lavendar.

It was shortly after this that Mr. Fenn and his big roan broke through the snow-drifts and made their way to Henry Roberts's house. "I must speak to you alone, sir," he said to the Irvingite, who, seeing him approaching, had hastened to open the door for him and draw him in out of the cold sunshine.

What the caller had to say was brief and to the point: Why was his daughter so unkind? John Fenn did not feel now that the world—which meant Philippa—hated him. He felt—he could not help feeling—that she did not even dislike him; "on the contrary...." So what reason had she for refusing him? But old Mr. Roberts shook his head. "A young female does not have 'reasons,'" he said. But he was sorry for the youth, and he roused himself from his abstraction long enough to question his girl:

"He is a worthy young man, my Philippa. Why do you dislike him?"

"I do not dislike him."

"Then why—?" her father protested.

But Philly was silent.

Even Hannah came to the rescue:

"You'll get a crooked stick at the end, if you don't look out!"

Philly laughed; then her face fell. "I sha'n't have any stick, ever!"

And Hannah, in her concern, confided her forebodings about the stick to Dr. King.

"I wonder," William said to himself, uneasily, "if I was wise to tell that child to hold her tongue? Perhaps they might have straightened it out between 'em before this, if she had told him and been done with it. I've a great mind to ask Dr. Lavendar."

He did ask him; at first with proper precautions not to betray a patient's confidence, but, at a word from Dr. Lavendar, tumbling into truthfulness.

"You are talking about young Philippa Roberts?" Dr. Lavendar announced, calmly, when William was half-way through his story of concealed identities.

"How did you guess it?" the doctor said, astonished; "oh, well, yes, I am. I guess there's no harm telling you—" "Not the slightest," said Dr. Lavendar, "especially as I knew it already from the young man—I mean, I knew she wouldn't have him. But I didn't know why until your story dovetailed with his. William, the thing has festered in her! The lancet ought to have been used the next day. I believe she'd have been married by this time if she'd spoken out, then and there."

William King was much chagrined. "I thought, being a girl, you know, her pride, her self-respect—"

"Oh yes; the lancet hurts," Dr. Lavendar admitted; "but it's better than—well, I don't know the terms of your trade, Willy-but I guess you know what I mean?"

"I guess I do," said William King, thoughtfully. "Do you suppose it's too late now?"

"It will be more of an operation," Dr. Lavendar conceded.

"Could I tell him?" William said, after a while.

"I don't see why not," Dr. Lavendar said.

"I suppose I'd have to ask her permission?"

"Nonsense!" said Dr. Lavendar.

That talk between the physician of the soul and the physician of the body happened on the very night when John Fenn, in his study in Perryville, with Mary dozing on his knee, threw over, once and for all, what he had called "submission" and made up his mind to get his girl! The very next morning he girded himself and walked forth upon the Pike toward Henry Roberts's house. He did not take Mary with him,—but not because he meant to urge salvation on Miss Philly! As it happened, Dr. King, too, set out upon the Perryville road that morning, remarking to Jinny that if he had had his wits about him that night in November, she would have been saved the trip on this May morning. The trip was easy enough; William had found a medical pamphlet among his mail, and he was reading it, with the reins hanging from the crook of his elbow. It was owing to this method of driving that John Fenn reached the Roberts house before Jinny passed it, so she went all the way to Perryville, and then had to turn round to follow on his track.

"Brother went to see Miss Philly, and he wouldn't take me," Mary complained to William King, when he drew up at the minister's door; and the doctor was sympathetic to the extent of five cents for candy comfort.

But when Jinny reached the Roberts gate Dr. King saw John Fenn down in the garden with Philippa. "Ho-ho!" said William. "I guess I'll wait and see if he works out his own salvation." He hitched Jinny, and went in to find Philippa's father, and to him he freed his mind. The two men sat on the porch looking down over the tops of the lilac-bushes into the garden, where they could just see the heads of the two young, unhappy people.

"It's nonsense, you know," said William King, "that Philly doesn't take that boy. He's head over heels in love with her."

"She is not attached to him in any such manner," Henry Roberts said; "I wonder a little at it, myself. He is a good youth."

The doctor looked at him wonderingly; it occurred to him that if he had a daughter he would understand her better than Philly's father understood her. "I think the child cares for him," he said; then, hesitatingly, he referred to John Fenn's sickness. "I suppose you know about it?" he said.

Philly's father bent his head; he knew, he thought, only too well; no divine revelation in a disordered digestion!

"Don't you think," William King said, smiling, "you might try to make her feel that she is wrong not to accept him, now that the charm has worked, so to speak?"

"The charm?" the old man repeated, vaguely.

"I thought you understood," the doctor said, frowning; then, after a minute's hesitation, he told him the facts.

Henry Roberts stared at him, shocked and silent; his girl, his Philippa, to have done such a thing! "So great a sin—my little Philly!" he said, faintly. He was pale with distress.

"My dear sir," Dr. King protested, impatiently, "don't talk about SIN in connection with that child. I wish I'd held my tongue!"

Henry Roberts was silent. Philippa's share in John Fenn's mysterious illness removed it still further from that revelation, waited for during all these years with such passionate patience. He paid no attention to William King's reassurances; and his silence was so silencing that by and by the doctor stopped talking and looked down into the garden again. He observed that those two heads had not drawn any nearer together. It was not John Fenn's fault....

"There can be no good reason," he was saying to Philippa. "If it is a bad reason, I will overcome it! Tell me why?"

She put her hand up to her lips and trembled.

"Come," he said; "it is my due, Philippa. I WILL know!"

Philippa shook her head. He took her other hand and stroked it, as one might stroke a child's hand to comfort and encourage it.

"You must tell me, beloved," he said. Philippa looked at him with scared eyes; then, suddenly pulling her hands from his and turning away, she covered her face and burst into uncontrollable sobbing. He, confounded and frightened, followed her and tried to soothe her.

"Never mind, Philly, never mind! if you don't want to tell me—"

"I do want to tell you. I will tell you! You will despise me. But I will tell you. I DID A WICKED DEED. It was this very plant-here, where we stand, monk's-hood! It was poison. I didn't know—oh, I didn't know. The book said monk's-hood—it was a mistake. But I did a wicked deed. I tried to kill you—"

She swayed as she spoke, and then seemed to sink down and down, until she lay, a forlorn little heap, at his feet. For one dreadful moment he thought she had lost her senses. He tried to lift her, saying, with agitation:

"Philly! We will not speak of it—"

"I murdered you," she whispered. "I put the charm into your tea, to make you... love me. You didn't die. But it was murder. I meant—I meant no harm—"

He understood. He lifted her up and held her in his arms. Up on the porch William King saw that the two heads were close together!

"Why!" the young man said. "Why—but Philly! You loved me!"

"What difference does that make?" she said, heavily.

"It makes much difference to me," he answered; he put his hand on her soft hair and tried to press her head down again on his shoulder. But she drew away.

"No; no."

"But—" he began. She interrupted him.

"Listen," she said; and then, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes breaking into a sob, she told him the story of that November night. He could hardly hear it through.

"Love, you loved me! You will marry me."

"No; I am a wicked girl—a—a—an immodest girl—"

"My beloved, you meant no wrong—" He paused, seeing that she was not listening.

Her father and the doctor were coming down the garden path; William King, beaming with satisfaction at the proximity of those two heads, had summoned Henry Roberts to "come along and give 'em your blessing!"

But as he reached them, standing now apart, the doctor's smile faded—evidently something had happened. John Fenn, tense with distress, called to him with frowning command: "Doctor! Tell her, for heaven's sake, tell her that it was nothing—that charm! Tell her she did no wrong."

"No one can do that," Henry Roberts said; "it was a sin."

"Now, look here—" Dr. King began.

"It was a sin to try to move by foolish arts the will of God."

Philippa turned to the young man, standing quivering beside her. "You see?" she said.

"No! No, I don't see—or if I do, never mind."

Just for a moment her face cleared. (Yes, truly, he was not thinking of her soul now!) But the gleam faded. "Oh, father, I am a great sinner," she whispered.

"No, you're not!" William King said.

"Yes, my Philippa, you are," Henry Roberts agreed, solemnly.

The lover made a despairing gesture: "Doctor King! tell her 'no!' 'no!'"

"Yes," her father went on, "it was a sin. Therefore, Philippa, SIN NO MORE. Did you pray that this young man's love might be given to you?"

Philippa said, in a whisper, "Yes."

"And it was given to you?"

"Yes."

"Philippa, was it the foolish weed that moved him to love?" She was silent. "My child, my Philly, it was your Saviour who moved the heart of this youth, because you asked Him. Will you do such despite to your Lord as to reject the gift he has given in answer to your prayer?" Philippa, with parted lips, was listening intently: "The gift He had given!"

Dr. King dared not speak. John Fenn looked at him, and then at Philippa, and trembled. Except for the sound of a bird stirring in its nest overhead in the branches, a sunny stillness brooded over the garden. Then, suddenly, the stillness was shattered by a strange sound—a loud, cadenced chant, full of rhythmical repetitions. The three who heard it thrilled from head to foot; Henry Roberts did not seem to hear it: it came from his own lips.

"Oh, Philippa! Oh, Philippa! I do require—I do require that you accept your Saviour's gift. Add not sin to sin. Oh, add not sin to sin by making prayer of no avail! Behold, He has set before thee an open door. Oh, let no man shut it. Oh, let no man shut it...."

The last word fell into a low, wailing note. No one spoke. The bird rustled in the leaves above them; a butterfly wavered slowly down to settle on a purple flag in the sunshine. Philly's eyes filled with blessed tears. She stretched out her arms to her father and smiled. But it was John Fenn who caught those slender, trembling arms against his breast; and, looking over at the old man, he said, softly, "THE VOICE OF GOD."

... "and I," said William King, telling the story that night to Dr. Lavendar—"I just wanted to say 'the voice of COMMON SENSE!'"

"My dear William," said the old man, gently, "the most beautiful thing in the world is the knowledge that comes to you, when you get to be as old as I am, that they are the same thing."

Prev Next