"Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to our iniquities," she prayed, the accustomed words rushing to her want, and she was suddenly aware that two people stood in the church. One of them spoke.
"Don't bother to stay with me," he said, and in the voice, it seemed, were the qualities that a man's speech should have—strength, certainty, the unteachable tone of gentle blood, and beyond these the note of personality, always indescribable, in this case carrying an appeal and an authority oddly combined. "Don't stay with me. I like to be alone here. I'm a clergyman, and I enjoy an old church like this. I'd like to be alone in it," and a bit of silver flashed.
If the tip did it or the compelling voice, the verger murmured a word about luncheon, was gone, and the girl in her dim corner saw, as the other turned, that he was the rescuer of her camera, whose name was, Joe had said and she remembered, Norman North. She was about to move, to let herself be seen, when the young man knelt suddenly in the old-fashioned front pew, as a good child might kneel who had been taught the ways of his mother church, and bent his dark head. She waited quietly while this servant spoke to his Master. There was no sound in the silent, sun-lanced church, but outside one heard as from far away the noises of the village. Katherine's eyes rested on the bowed head, and she wondered uncertainly if she should let him know of her presence, or if it might not be better to slip out unnoticed, when in a moment he had risen and was swinging with a vigorous step up the little corkscrew stairway of the pulpit. There he stood, facing the silence, facing the flower-starred shadows, the empty spaces; facing her, but not seeing her. And the girl forgot herself and the question of her going as she saw the look in his face, the light which comes at times to those who give their lives to holiness, since the day when the people, gazing at Stephen, the martyr, "saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." When his voice floated out on the dim, sunny atmosphere it rested as lightly on the silence as if the notes of an organ rolled through its own place. He spoke a prayer of a service which, to those whose babyhood has been consecrated by it, whose childhood and youth have listened to its simple and stately words, whose manhood and womanhood have been carried over many a hard place by the lift of its familiar sentences,—he spoke a prayer of that service which is less dear only, to those bred in it, than the voices of their dearest. As a priest begins to speak to his congregation he began, and the hearer in the shadow of the gallery listened, awed:
"The Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before Him."
And in the little church was silence as if all the earth obeyed. The collect for the day came next, and a bit of jubilant Easter service, and then his mind seemed to drift back to the sentences with which the prayer-book opens.
"This is the day which the Lord hath made," the ringing voice announced. "Let us rejoice and be glad in it." And then, stabbing into the girl's fevered conscience, "I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." It was as if an inflexible judge spoke the words for her. "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive," the pure, stern tones went on.
She was not turning away from wickedness; she did not mean to turn away; she would not do that which was lawful. The girl shivered. She could not hear this dreadful accusal from the very pulpit. She must leave this place. And with that the man, as if in a sudden passion of feeling, had tossed his right hand high above him; his head was thrown back; his eyes shone up into the shadows of the roof as if they would pierce material things and see Him who reigned; he was pleading as if for his life, pleading for his brothers, for human beings who sin and suffer.
"O Lord," he prayed, "spare all those who confess their sins unto Thee, that they whose consciences by sin are accused, by Thy merciful pardon may be absolved; through Christ our Lord." And suddenly he was using the very words which had come to her of themselves a few minutes before. "Deal not with us according to our sins—deal not with us," he repeated, as if wresting forgiveness for his fellows from the Almighty. "Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to our iniquities." And while the echo of the words yet held the girl motionless he was gone.
Down by the road which runs past the hotel, sunken ten feet below its level, are the tennis-courts, and soldiers in scarlet and khaki, and blue-jackets with floating ribbons, and negro bell-boys returning from errands, and white-gowned American women with flowery hats, and men in summer flannels stop as they pass, and sit on the low wall and watch the games. There is always a gallery for the tennis-players. But on a Tuesday morning about eleven o'clock the audience began to melt away in disgust. Without doubt they were having plenty of amusement among themselves, these tennis-players grouped at one side of the court and filling the air with explosions of laughter. But the amusement of the public was being neglected. Why in the world, being rubber-shod as to the foot and racqueted as to the hand, did they not play tennis? A girl in a short white dress, wearing white tennis-shoes and carrying a racquet, came tripping down the flight of stone steps, and stopped as she stood on the last landing and seemed to ask the same question. She came slowly across the empty court, looking with curiosity at the bunch of absorbed people, and presently she caught her breath. The man who was the centre of the group, who was making, apparently, the amusement, was the young clergyman, Norman North.
There was an outburst, a chorus of: "You can't have that one, Mr. North!" "That's been used!" "That's Mr. Dennison's!"
A tall English officer—a fine, manly mixture of big muscles and fresh color and khaki—looked up, saw the girl, and swung toward her. "Good morning, Miss Newbold. Come and join the fun. Devil of a fellow, that North,—they say he's a parson."
"What is it? What are they laughing at?" Katherine demanded.
"They're doing a Limerick tournament, which is what North calls the game. Mr. Gale is timekeeper. They're to see which recites most rhymes inside five minutes. The winner picks his court and plays with Miss Lee."
Captain Comerford imparted this in jerky whispers, listening with one ear all the time to a sound which stirred Katherine, the voice which she had heard yesterday in the church at St. George's. The Englishman's spasmodic growl stopped, and she drifted a step nearer, listening. As she caught the words, her brows drew together with displeasure, with shocked surprise. The inspired saint of yesterday was reciting with earnestness, with every delicate inflection of his beautiful voice, these words:
"There was a young curate of Kidderminster,
Who kindly, but firmly, chid a spinster,
Because on the ice
She said something not nice
When he quite inadvertently slid ag'inst her."
As the roar which followed this subsided, Katherine's face cleared. What right had she to make a pattern of solemn righteousness for this stranger and be insulted if he did not fit? Certainly he was saintly—she had seen his soul bared to her vision; but certainly he was human also, as this moment was demonstrating. It flashed over her vaguely to wonder which was the dominant quality—which would rule in a stress of temptation—the saintly side or the human? But at least he was human with a winning humanity. His mirth and his enjoyment of it were as spontaneous as a mischievous, bright child's, and it was easy to see that the charm of his remarkable voice attracted others as it had attracted her.
"There was a young fellow from Clyde,
Who was often at funerals espied—"
he had begun, and with that, between her first shock and her swift recovery, with the contrast between the man of yesterday and the man of to-day, Katherine suddenly laughed aloud. North stopped short, and turned and looked at her, and for a second and their eyes met, and each read recognition and friendliness. The Limerick went on:
"When asked who was dead,
He nodded and said,
'I don't know—I just came for the ride.'"
"Eleven for Mr. North—one-half minute more," called Mr. Gale, and instantly North was in the breach:
"A sore-hipped hippopotamus quite flustered
Objected to a poultice made of custard;
'Can't you doctor up my hip
With anything but flip?'
So they put upon the hip a pot o' mustard.'"
And the half-minute was done and North had won, and there was clapping of hands for the victor, and at once, before the little uproar was over, Katherine saw him speak a word to Mr. Gale, and saw the latter, turning, stare about as if searching for some one, and, meeting her glance, smile.
"I want to present Mr. North, Miss Newbold," Gale said.
"Why did you laugh in the middle of my Limerick? Had you heard it?" North demanded, as if they had known each other a year instead of a minute.
"No, I had not heard it." Katherine shook her head.
"Then why did you laugh?"
She looked at him reflectively. "I don't know you well enough to tell you that."
"How soon will you know me well enough—if I do my best?"
She considered. "About three weeks from yesterday."
Many things grow fast in southern climates—fruits, flowers, even friendship and love. Three weeks later, on a hot, bright morning of April, North and Katherine Newbold were walking down a road of Bermuda to the sea, and between them was what had ripened in the twenty-one days from a germ to a full-grown bud, ready to open at the lightest touch into flower. As they walked down such a road of a dream, the man talked to the girl as he had never talked to any one before. He spoke of his work and its hopes and disappointments, of the pathos, the tragedy, the comedy often of a way of life which leads by a deeper cut through men's hearts than any other, and he told her also, modestly indeed, and because he loved to tell her what meant much to him, of the joy of knowing himself successful in his parish. He went into details, absorbingly interesting to him, and this new luxury of speaking freely carried him away.
"I hope I'm not boring you." His frank gaze turned on her anxiously. "I don't know what right I have to assume that the increase in the Sunday-school, or even the new brass pulpit, is a fascinating subject to you. I never did this before," he said, and there was something in his voice which hindered the girl from answering his glance. But there was no air of being bored about her, and he went on. "However, life isn't all good luck. I had a serious blow just before I came down here—a queer thing happened. I told you just now that all the large gifts to St. John's had come from one man—a former parishioner. The man was James Litterny, of the great firm of—Why, what's the matter—what is it?" For Katherine had stopped short, in her fast, swinging walk, and without a sound had swayed and caught at the wall as if to keep herself from falling. Before he could reach her she had straightened herself and was smiling.
"I felt ill for a second—it's nothing,—let's go along."
North made eager suggestions for her comfort, but the girl was firm in her assertion, that she was now quite well, so that, having no sisters and being ignorant that a healthy young woman does not, any more than a healthy young man, go white and stagger without reason, he yielded, and they walked briskly on.
"You were telling me something that happened to you—something connected with Mr.—with the rich parishioner." Her tone was steady and casual, but looking at her, he saw that she was still pale.
"Do you really want to hear my yarns? You're sure it isn't that which made you feel faint—because I talked so much?"
"It's always an effort not to talk myself," she laughed up at him, yet with a strange look in her eyes. "All the same, talk a little more. Tell me what you began to tell about Mr. Litterny." The name came out full and strong.
"Oh, that! Well, it's a story extraordinary enough for a book. I think it will interest you."
"I think it will," Katherine agreed.
"You see," he went on, "Mr. Litterny promised us a new parish-house, the best and largest practicable. It was to cost, with the lot, ten thousand dollars. It was to be begun this spring. Not long before I came to Bermuda, I had a note one morning from him, asking me to come to his house the next evening. I went, and he told me that the parish-house would have to be given up for the present, because the firm of Litterny Brothers had just met with a loss, through a most skilful and original robbery, of five thousand dollars."
"A robbery?" the girl repeated. "Burglars, you mean?"
"Something much more artistic than burglars. I told you this story was good enough for a book. It's been kept quiet because the detectives thought the chance better that way of hunting the thief to earth." (Why should she catch her breath?) "But I'm under no promise—I'm sure I may tell you. You're not likely to have any connection with the rascal."
Katherine's step hung a little as if she shrank from the words, but she caught at a part of the sentence and repeated it, "'Hunting the thief to earth'—you say that as if you'd like to see it done."
"I would like to see it done," said North, with slow emphasis. "Nothing has ever more roused my resentment. I suppose it's partly the loss of the parish-house, but, aside from that, it makes me rage to think of splendid old James Litterny, the biggest-hearted man I know, being done in that way. Why, he'd have helped the scoundrel in a minute if he'd gone to him instead of stealing from him. Usually my sympathies are with the sinner, but I believe if I caught this one I'd be merciless."
"Would you mind sitting down here?" Katherine asked, in a voice which sounded hard. "I'm not ill, but I feel—tired. I want to sit here and listen to the story of that unprincipled thief and his wicked robbery."
North was all solicitude in a moment, but the girl put him aside impatiently.
"I'm quite right. Don't bother. I just want to be still while you talk. See what a good seat this is."
Over the russet sand of the dunes the sea flashed a burning blue; storm-twisted cedars led a rutted road down to it; in the salt air the piny odor was sharp with sunlight. Katherine had dropped beneath one of the dwarfed trees, and leaning back, smiled dimly up at him with a stricken face which North did not understand.
"You are ill," he said, anxiously. "You look ill. Please let me take care of you. There is a house back there—let me—" but she interrupted:
"I'm not ill, and I won't be fussed over. I'm not exactly right, but I will be in a few minutes. The best thing for me is just to rest here and have you talk to me. Tell me that story you are so slow about."
He took her at her word. Lying at full length at her feet—his head propped on a hillock so that he might look into her face, one of his hands against the hem of her white dress,—the shadows of the cedars swept back and forth across him, the south sea glittered beyond the sand-dunes, and he told the story.
"Mr. Litterny was in his office in the early afternoon of February 18," he began, "when a man called him up on the telephone. Mr. Litterny did not recognize the voice, but the man stated at once that he was Burr Claflin, whose name you may know. He is a rich broker, and a personal friend of both the Litternys. Voice is so uncertain a quantity over a telephone that it did not occur to Mr. Litterny to be suspicious on that point, and the conversation was absolutely in character otherwise. The talker used expressions and a manner of saying things which the jeweller knew to be characteristic of Claflin.
"He told Mr. Litterny that he had just made a lucky hit in stocks, and 'turned over a bunch of money,' as he put it, and that he wanted to make his wife a present. 'Now—this afternoon—this minute,' he said, which was just like Burr Claflin, who is an impetuous old chap. 'I want to give her a diamond brooch, and I want her to wear it out to dinner to-night,' he said. 'Can't you send two or three corkers up to the house for me?' That surprised Mr. Litterny and he hesitated, but finally said that he would do it. It was against the rules of the house, but as it was for Mr. Claflin he would do it. They had a little talk about the details, and Claflin arranged to call up his wife and tell her that the jewels would be there at four-thirty, so that she could look out for them personally. All that was the Litterny end of the affair. Simple enough, wasn't it?"
Katherine's eyes were so intent, so brilliant, that Norman North went on with a pleased sense that he told the tale well:
"Now begins the Claflin experience. At half past four a clerk from Litterny's left a package at the Claflin house in Cleveland Avenue, which was at once taken, as the man desired, to Mrs. Claflin. She opened it and found three very handsome diamond brooches, which astonished her extremely, as she knew nothing about them. However, it was not unusual for Claflin to give her jewelry, and he is, as I said, an impulsive man, so that unexpected presents had come once or twice before; and altogether, being much taken with the stones, she concluded simply that she would understand when her husband came home to dinner.
"However, her hopes were dashed, for twenty minutes later, barely long enough for the clerk to have got back to the shop, she was called to the telephone by a message, said to be from Litterny's, and a most polite and apologetic person explained over the line that a mistake had been made; that the diamonds had been addressed and sent to her by an error of the shipping-clerk; that they were not intended for Mrs. Burr Claflin, but for Mrs. Bird Catlin, and that the change in name had been discovered on the messenger's return. Would Mrs. Claflin pardon the trouble caused, and would she be good enough to see that the package was given to their man, who would call for it in fifteen minutes? Now the Catlins, as you must know, are richer people even than the Claflins, so that the thing was absolutely plausible. Mrs. Claflin tied up the jewels herself, and entrusted them to her own maid, who has been with her for years, and this woman answered the door and gave the parcel into the hands of a man who said that he was sent from Litterny's for it. All that the maid could say of him was that he was 'a pretty young man, with a speech like a gentleman.' And that was the last that has been seen of the diamond brooches. Wasn't it simple? Didn't I tell you that this affair was an artistic one?" North demanded.
Katherine Newbold drew a deep breath, and the story-teller, watching her face, saw that she was stirred with an emotion which he put down, with a slight surprise, to interest in his narrative.
"Is there no clew to the—thief? Have they no idea at all? Haven't those wonderful detectives yet got on—his track?"
North shook his head. "I had a letter by yesterday's boat from Mr. Litterny about another matter, and he spoke of this. He said the police were baffled—that he believed now that it could never be traced."
"Thank God!" Katherine said, slowly and distinctly, and North stared in astonishment.
"What?" His tone was incredulous.
"Oh; don't take me so seriously," said the girl, impatiently. "It's only that I can't sympathize with your multimillionaire, who loses a little of his heaps of money, against some poor soul to whom that little may mean life or death—life or death, maybe, for his nearest and dearest. Mr. Litterny has had a small loss, which he won't feel in a year from now. The thief, the rascal, the scoundrel, as you call him so fluently, has escaped for now, perhaps, with his ill-gotten gains, but he is a hunted thing, living with a black terror of being found out—a terror which clutches him when he prays and when he dances. It's the thief I'm sorry for—I'm sorry for him—I'm sorry for him." Her voice was agitated and uneven beyond what seemed reasonable.
"'The way of the transgressor is hard,'" Norman North said, slowly, and looked across the shifting sand-stretch to the inevitable sea, and spoke the words pitilessly, as if an inevitable law spoke through him.
They cut into the girl's soul. A quick gasp of pain broke from her, and the man turned and saw her face and sprang to his feet.
"Come," he said,—"come home," and held out his hands.
She let him take hers, and he lifted her lightly, and did not let her hands go. For a second they stood, and into the silence a deep boom of the water against the beach thundered and died away. He drew the hands slowly toward him till he held them against him. There seemed not to be any need for words.
Half an hour later, as they walked back through the sweet loneliness of Springfield Avenue, North said: "You've forgotten something. You've forgotten that this is the day you were to tell me why you had the bad manners to laugh at me before you knew me. Now that we are engaged it's your duty to tell me if I'm ridiculous."
There was none of the responsive, soft laughter he expected. "We're not engaged—we can't be engaged," she threw back, impetuously, and as he looked at her there was suffering in her face.
"What do you mean? You told me you loved me." His voice was full of its curious mixture of gentleness and sternness, and she shrank visibly from the sternness.
"Don't be hard on me," she begged, like a frightened child, and he caught her hand with a quick exclamation. "I'll tell you—everything. Not only that little thing about my laughing, but—but more—everything. Why I cannot be engaged to you. I must tell you—I know it—but, oh! not to-day—not for a little while! Let me have this little time to be happy. You sail a week from to-day. I'll write it all for you, and you can read it on the way to New York. That will do—won't that do?" she pleaded.
North took both her hands in a hard grasp and searched her face and her eyes—eyes clear and sweet, though filled with misery. "Yes, that will do," he said. "It's all nonsense that you can't be engaged to me. You are engaged to me, and you are going to marry me. If you love me—and you say you do,—there's nothing I'll let interfere. Nothing—absolutely nothing." There was little of the saint in his look now; it was filled with human love and masterful determination, and in his eyes smouldered a recklessness, a will to have his way, that was no angel, but all man.
A week later Norman North sailed to New York, and in his pocket was a letter which was not to be read till Bermuda was out of sight. When the coral reef was passed, when the fairy blue of the island waters had changed to the dark swell of the Atlantic, he slipped the bolt in the door of his cabin and took out the letter.
"I laughed because you were so wonderfully two men in one," it began, "I was in the church at St. George's the day when you sent the verger away and went into the pulpit and said parts of the service. I could not tell you this before because it came so close to the other thing which I must tell you now; because I sat trembling before you that day, hidden in the shadow of a gallery, knowing myself a criminal, while you stood above me like a pitiless judge and rolled out sentences that were bolts of fire emptied on my soul. The next morning I heard you reciting Limericks. Are you surprised that I laughed when the contrast struck me? Even then I wondered which was the real of you, the saint or the man,—which would win if it came to a desperate fight. The fight is coming, Norman.
"That's all a preamble. Here is what you must know: I am the thief who stole Mr. Litterny's diamonds."
The letter fell, and the man caught at it as it fell. His hand shook, but he laughed aloud.
"It is a joke," he said, in a queer, dry voice. "A wretched joke. How can she?" And he read on:
"You won't believe this at first; you will think I am making a poor joke; but you will have to believe it in the end. I will try to put the case before you as an outside person would put it, without softening or condoning. My mother was very ill; the specialist, to pay whom we had sold her last jewel, said that she would die if she were not taken south; we had no money to take her south. That night my brother lost his self-control and raved about breaking into a shop and stealing diamonds, to get money to save her life. That put the thought into my mind, and I made a plan. Randolph, my brother, is a clever amateur actor, and the rich Burr Claflin is our distant cousin. We both know him fairly well, and it was easy enough for Randolph to copy his mannerisms. We knew also, of course, more or less, his way of living, and that it would not be out of drawing that he should send up diamonds to his wife unexpectedly. I planned it all, and I made Randolph do it. I have always been able to influence him to what I pleased. The sin is all mine, not his. We had been selling my mother's jewels little by little for several years, so we had no difficulty in getting rid of the stones, which Randolph took from their settings and sold to different dealers. My mother knows nothing of where the money came from. We are living in Bermuda now, in comfort and luxury, I as well as she, on the profits of my thievery. I am not sorry. It has wrecked life, perhaps eternity, for me, but I would do it again to save my mother.
"I put this confession into your hands to do with, as far as I am concerned, what you like. If the saint in you believes that I ought to be sent to jail, take this to Mr. Litterny and have him send me to jail. But you shan't touch Randolph—you are not free there. It was I who did it—he was my tool,—any one will tell you I have the stronger will. You shall not hurt Randolph—that is barred.
"You see now why I couldn't be engaged to you—you wouldn't want to marry a thief, would you, Norman? I can never make restitution, you know, for the money will be mostly gone before we get home, and there is no more to come. You could not, either, for you said that you had little beyond your salary. We could never make it good to Mr. Litterny, even if you wanted to marry me after this. Mr. Litterny is your best friend; you are bound to him by a thousand ties of gratitude and affection. You can't marry a thief who has robbed him of five thousand dollars, and never tell him, and go on taking his gifts. That is the way the saint will look at it—the saint who thundered awful warnings at me in the little church at St. George's. But even that day there was something gentler than the dreadful holiness of you. Do you remember how you pleaded, begged as if of your father, for your brothers and sisters? 'Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to our iniquities,' you said. Do you remember? As you said that to God, I say it to you, I love you. I leave my fate at your mercy. But don't forget that you yourself begged that, with your hands stretched out to heaven, as I stretch my hands to you, Norman, Norman—'Deal not with me according to my sins, neither reward me according to my iniquities.'"
The noises of a ship moving across a quiet ocean went on steadily. Many feet tramped back and forth on the deck, and cheerful voices and laughter floated through the skylight, and down below a man knelt in a narrow cabin with his head buried in his arms, motionless.