Part 31

“But you will not last.”

“That is of little moment; long or short, a man can only give himself. Our Lord was not here very long.” And then Father Damon smiled, and said “My dear friend, I'm really doing very well. Of course I get tired. Then I come up again. And every now and then I get a lift. Did Jack tell you about Henderson?”

“Yes. Wasn't it strange?”

“I never was more surprised. He sent for me to come to his office. Without any circumlocution, he asked me how I was getting on, and, before I could answer, he said, in the driest business way, that he had been thinking over a little plan, and perhaps I could help him. He had a little money he wanted to invest--RR.” 'In our mission chapel?' I asked.

“'No,' he said, without moving a muscle. 'Not that. I don't know much about chapels, Father Damon. But I've been hearing what you are doing, and it occurred to me that you must come across a good many cases not in the regular charities that you could help judiciously, get them over hard spots, without encouraging dependence. I'm going to put ten thousand dollars into your hands, if you'll be bothered with it, to use at your discretion.'

“I was taken aback, and I suppose I showed it, and I said that was a great deal of money to intrust to one man.

“Henderson showed a little impatience. It depended upon the man. That was his lookout. The money would be deposited, he said, in bank to my order, and he asked me for my signature that he could send with the deposit.

“Of course I thanked him warmly, and said I hoped I could do some good with it. He did not seem to pay much attention to what I was saying. He was looking out of the window to the bare trees in the court back of his office, and his hands were moving the papers on his table aimlessly about.

“'I shall know,' he said, 'when you have drawn this out. I've got a fancy for keeping a little fund of this sort there.' And then he added, still not looking at me, but at the dead branches, 'You might call it the Margaret Fund.'”

“That was the name of his first wife!” Edith exclaimed.

“Yes, I remember. I said I would, and began to thank him again as I rose from my chair. He was still looking away, and saying, as if to himself, 'I think she would like that.' And then he turned, and, in his usual abrupt office manner, said: 'Good-morning, good-morning. I am very much obliged to you.'”

“Wasn't it all very strange!” Edith spoke, after a moment. “I didn't suppose he cared. Do you think it was just sentiment?”

“I shouldn't wonder. Men like Henderson do queer things. In the hearts of such hardened men there are sometimes roots of sentiment that you wouldn't suspect. But I don't know. The Lord somehow looks out for his poor.”

Notwithstanding this windfall of charity, Father Damon seemed somewhat depressed. “I wish,” he said, after a pause, “he had given it to the mission. We are so poor, and modern philanthropy all runs in other directions. The relief of temporary suffering has taken the place of the care of souls.”

“But Dr. Leigh said that you were interesting the churches in the labor unions.”

“Yes. It is an effort to do something. The church must put herself into sympathetic relations with these people, or she will accomplish nothing. To get them into the church we must take up their burdens. But it is a long way round. It is not the old method of applying the gospel to men's sins.”

“And yet,” Edith insisted, “you must admit that such people as Dr. Leigh are doing a good work.”

Father Damon did not reply immediately. Presently he asked: “Do you think, Mrs. Delancy, that Dr. Leigh has any sympathy with the higher life, with spiritual things? I wish I could think so.”

“With the higher life of humanity, certainly.”

“Ah, that is too vague. I sometimes feel that she and those like her are the worst opponents to our work. They substitute humanitarianism for the gospel.”

“Yet I know of no one who works more than Ruth Leigh in the self-sacrificing spirit of the Master.”

“Whom she denies!” The quick reply came with a flush in his pale face, and he instantly arose and walked away to the window and stood for some moments in silence. When he turned there was another expression in his eyes and a note of tenderness in his voice that contradicted the severity of the priest. It was the man that spoke. “Yes, she is the best woman I ever knew. God help me! I fear I am not fit for my work.”

This outburst of Father Damon to her, so unlike his calm and trained manner, surprised Edith, although she had already some suspicion of his state of mind. But it would not have surprised her if she had known more of men, the necessity of the repressed and tortured soul for sympathy, and that it is more surely to be found in the heart of a pure woman than elsewhere.

But there was nothing that she could say, as she took his hand to bid him good-by, except the commonplace that Dr. Leigh had expressed anxiety that he was overworking, and that for the sake of his work he must be more prudent. Yet her eyes expressed the sympathy she did not put in words.

Father Damon understood this, and he went away profoundly grateful for her forbearance of verbal expression as much as for her sympathy. But he did not suspect that she needed sympathy quite as much as he did, and consequently he did not guess the extent of her self-control. It would have been an immense relief to have opened her heart to him--and to whom could she more safely do this than to a priest set apart from all human entanglements?--and to have asked his advice. But Edith's peculiar strength--or was it the highest womanly instinct?--lay in her discernment of the truth that in one relation of life no confidences are possible outside of that relation except to its injury, and that to ask interference is pretty sure to seal its failure. As its highest joys cannot be participated in, so its estrangements cannot be healed by any influence outside of its sacred compact. To give confidence outside is to destroy the mutual confidence upon which the relation rests, and though interference may patch up livable compromises, the bloom of love and the joy of life are not in them. Edith knew that if she could not win her own battle, no human aid could win it for her.

And it was all the more difficult because it was vague and indefinite, as the greater part of domestic tragedies are. For the most part life goes on with external smoothness, and the public always professes surprise when some accident, a suit at law, a sudden death, a contested will, a slip from apparent integrity, or family greed or feminine revenge, turns the light of publicity upon a household, to find how hollow the life has been; in the light of forgotten letters, revealing check-books, servants' gossip, and long-established habits of aversion or forbearance, how much sordidness and meanness!

Was not everything going on as usual in the Delancy house and in the little world of which it was a part? If there had been any open neglect or jealousy, any quarrel or rupture, or any scene, these could be described. These would have an interest to the biographer and perhaps to the public. But at this period there was nothing of this sort to tell. There were no scenes. There were no protests or remonstrances or accusations, nor to the world was there any change in the daily life of these two.

It was more pitiful even than that. Here was a woman who had set her heart in all the passionate love of a pure ideal, and day by day she felt that the world, the frivolous world, with its low and selfish aims, was too strong for her, and that the stream was wrecking her life because it was bearing Jack away from her. What could one woman do against the accepted demoralizations of her social life? To go with them, not to care, to accept Jack's idle, good-natured, easy philosophy of life and conduct, would not that have insured a peaceful life? Why shouldn't she conform and float, and not mind?