Part 30

"Yes."

He answered absently. He was thinking that if she was looking for him, then she had not understood and their relation still rested on the old innocent footing. Whatever explanation of his conduct and leave-taking the day before she had devised, it had not been in his disfavour. In all probability, she had referred it, as she had referred everything else, to his affair with Amy. His conscience smote him at the thought of her indestructible trust in him.

"If this is your last Sunday," resumed the parson in a voice rather plaintive, "then this is our last Sunday night together. And that was my last sermon. Well, it's not a bad one to take with you. By the time you get back, you'll thank me more for it than you did this morning--if you heed it."

There was another silence before he continued, musingly:

"What an expression a sermon will sometimes bring out on a man's face! While I was preaching, I saw many a thing that no man knew I saw. It was as though I were crossing actual wilderness-es; I met the wild beasts of different souls, I crept up on the lurking savages of the passions. I believe some of those men would have liked to confess to me. I wish they had."

He forbore to speak of John's black look, though it was of this that he was most grievously thinking and would have led the way to have explained. But no answer came."

There was one face with no hidden guilt in it, no shame. I read into the depths of that clear mind. It said: 'I have conquered my wilderness.' I have never known another such woman as Mrs. Falconer. She never speaks of herself; but when I am with her, I feel that the struggles of my life have been nothing."

"Yes," he continued, out of kindness trying to take no notice of his companion's silence, "she holds in quietness her land of the spirit; but there are battle-fields in her nature that fill me with awe by their silence. I'd dread to be the person to cause her any further trouble in this world."

The schoolmaster started up, went into the cabin, and quickly came out again. The parson, absorbed in his reflections, had not noticed:

"You've thought I've not sympathized with you in your affair with Amy. It's true. But if you'd ever loved this woman and failed, I could have sympathized."

"Why don't you raise the money to build a better church by getting up a lottery?" asked John, breaking in harshly upon the parson's gentleness.

The question brought on a short discussion of this method of aiding schools and churches, then much in vogue. The parson rather favoured the plan (and it is known that afterwards a better church was built for him through this device); but his companion bore but a listless part in the talk: he was balancing the chances, the honour and the dishonour, in a lottery of life.

"You are not like yourself to-day," said the parson reproachfully after silence had come on again.

I know it," replied John freely, as if awaking at last.

"Well, each of us has his troubles. Sometimes I have likened the human race to a caravan of camels crossing a desert--each with sore on his hump and each with his load so placed as to rub that sore. It is all right for the back to bear its burden, but I don't think there should have been any sore!"

"Let me ask you a question," said John, suddenly and earnestly. "Have there ever been days in your life when, if you'd been the camel, you'd have thrown the load and driver off?"

"Ah!" said the parson keenly, but gave no answer.

"Have there ever been days when you'd rather have done wrong than right?"

"Yes; there have been such days--when I was young and wild." The confession was reluctant.

"Have you ever had a trouble, and everybody around you fell upon you in the belief that it was something else?"

"That has happened to me--I suppose to all of us."

"Were you greatly helped by their misunderstanding you?"

"I can't say that I was."

"You would have been glad for them to know the truth, but you didn't choose to tell them?"

"Yes; I have gone through such an experience."

"So that their sympathy was in effect ridiculous?"

"That is true also."

"If you have been through all this," said John conclusively, "then without knowing anything more, you can understand why I am not like myself, as you say, and haven't been lately."