CHAPTER XVII.
That John Fenton was in a peculiar frame of mind was sufficiently proved by the fact that Sunday morning had arrived, and he had arisen early,—very early, three hours before noon,—and was pleased at this innovation in his habits. It was a clear, bracing day, with a promise of spring in the air, and a saline odor in the breeze, a public confession that it had kissed the sea when the sun came up. How much he owes to the salt air for the sprightliness that is in him the average New Yorker seldom realizes. Manhattan Island is a natural health-resort. That many of its inhabitants languish and die before their time is the fault not of nature but of man.
John Fenton strode down the avenue after breakfast, one of the best-dressed men abroad at that early hour. The last few months had made a great change in his outward appearance. Somewhat to his surprise, he had found that by refraining from alcoholic self-indulgence he had not only gained in nervous energy, but had reaped a fat financial harvest. Renewing his youth in more ways than one, he had expended at his tailor’s money that, under his former habits of life, would have gone to swell a saloon’s growing surplus. He had been noted in the old days for his good taste in dress, and his years of carelessness had not destroyed his natural ability to select attire that was at once fashionable and becoming.
With a clean-shaven face, a glow on his cheeks, and the light of physical contentment in his eyes, John Fenton looked positively handsome as he entered Richard Stoughton’s rooms, and found his young friend, en négligé, smoking a pipe, and perusing, with a sense of self-satisfaction that age cannot wither nor custom stale, his work of the previous day as it appeared in print in that morning’s edition of the Trumpet.
“What is it I see before me?” cried Richard, springing up, and holding out his hand to his guest. “Upon what meat doth this, our Cæsar, feed, that he gets up and out before noon?”
Fenton seated himself, and lighted a cigar.
“Do you know, my boy,” he remarked quietly, “I have spent the night in a sleepless vigil, pondering the error of your ways. I have become convinced that it is absolutely imperative that you should be given an antidote for last night’s poison.”
“I did smoke too much, I acknowledge,” returned Richard densely; “but I have drunk several cups of coffee this morning, and feel much better.”
“Flippant youngster! have you no reverence in your make-up? I referred not to the cigars, but to the tout ensemble.”
“Is that her name, John? It’s a queer one, you must admit. But, seriously, what are you driving at? Here you are at ten o’clock on Sunday morning—an hour that has for years, as you have told me, found you sound asleep—abroad in the land, dressed with the most extreme care, and delivering sermons gratis to your friends. I acknowledge that there is a mystery here that I cannot solve.”
“It is simple enough, Richard. I have come to an important decision, and I am about to take a step in which I want your companionship and sympathy.”
There was a solemnity in Fenton’s manner that caused Richard to look at him with mingled curiosity and surprise.
“Of course, John, I’ll give you all the help I can. But frankly, now, what are you going to do?”
Fenton puffed in silence for a moment, gazing earnestly at his companion.
“What am I going to do, Richard? I’m going to church.”
Richard laughed merrily.
“And you want my support and countenance in this heroic purpose? Well, John, I see no reason why I should discourage your eccentric but praiseworthy design. If you’ll amuse yourself with the papers for a few moments, I will get into a garb of a more devotional character than this old smoking-jacket. To go to church with John Fenton! That is a privilege that I had never hoped to win. But I’ve given up all hope of understanding you, John. You’re a puzzle I can’t solve.”
With these words Richard entered an inner room, and left John Fenton to puff his cigar, and glance indifferently over the newspapers. It is seldom that a true journalist cannot find occupation, even excitement, in the latest edition of the newspaper with which he is connected; but, for some reason or other, Fenton was in no mood to take his usual professional interest in the Sunday make-up of the Trumpet, and when Richard returned to the room he found his friend standing at the window, and gazing dreamily into the street.
A quarter of an hour later the two friends were seated in one of the rear pews of a church that had kept pace with the demands that the modern love of luxury makes on the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual cult. An agnostic, even an atheist, would have felt a reverential awe in such surroundings, an inclination to worship something, if it was nothing but the beauty of interior decoration, as an abstract influence, or the concrete glory of well-dressed women. There is something for all men in a church that frowns not on the æsthetic pleasures that the eye and ear can taste.
As they rose at the opening words of the service, “The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him,” Richard’s eye followed Fenton’s, and a new light broke upon his mind. His friend was not as inexplicably eccentric as he had considered him. About half-way between them and the altar, and at an angle that placed her in full view from where they stood, Richard saw Gertrude Van Vleck, a striking figure even in that gathering of women of fashion. He turned on the instant, and his eyes looked into Fenton’s. He could not repress a smile that impressed its meaning upon the latter, whose face bore an expression of mingled satisfaction and annoyance as he knelt to join in the general confession. His satisfaction was caused by the fact that he could watch Gertrude Van Vleck, unobserved by her, for an entire morning. His annoyance was due to the mocking light in Richard’s glance.
As the service progressed, with its stately and impressive words and forms, Richard felt keenly the influence of his surroundings. He had been brought up in the atmosphere of the church, and under its caress the highest dreams and aspirations of his early youth were revivified. Before long he had forgotten John Fenton and Gertrude Van Vleck; and as the soft strains of Lenten music stole through the perfumed air, the face of a brown-eyed woman whose gaze was sad and tearful filled his soul with remorse. He felt like one who had committed sacrilege. The garish glitter, the tawdry brilliancy, of the night he had spent in Bohemia seemed to him at that moment pitifully repulsive. The dark face of the girl who had fascinated him for the moment told its true story as he recalled it in the calm and holy precincts of the temple where he sat. That he had yielded to the debasing influence that she had exerted at the time was a fact that filled him with amazement and discontent.
“What strange coincidence is this?” he exclaimed to himself, as the words of the Epistle for the Third Sunday in Lent seemed to voice the thoughts that were surging through his brain: “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. But all uncleanness, let it not be once named amongst you, as becometh saints; neither foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.”
Richard Stoughton was of an extremely impressionable temperament, and time had not yet hardened the shell that surrounds the soul. It seemed to him at that moment as though the inspired word of God had spoken to him alone in that consecrated temple, and had warned him to seek higher things; to avoid, for the sake of a great reward, the mud-holes and pitfalls in the path before him. He knelt in prayer with a reverential fervor that was new to him.
From the Gospel for the day, St. Luke xi. 14, the rector had taken his text: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.” Richard listened to the sermon with an interest that was almost painful. The preacher was a man not yet in middle life, who had already won a high position for his eloquence and fearlessness. There was no prosy reiteration of self-evident truths that have lost their influence through long service in the pulpit in the words that he poured forth. He was a man of the times; and he applied the faith that was in him to the topics of the hour, and drove his lesson home with a skill and courage that were intensely effective. He seemed to recognize that he was a warrior in the front ranks of the church militant, and there was no half-heartedness in the blows that he struck. The prosperity of a sermon, like that of a jest, lies in the ear of him that hears it. Richard Stoughton was in a receptive mood, and the ringing words of the preacher touched chords in his nature that had long ceased to vibrate. He bent his head at the benediction with a sense of renewed reverence and faith that was both welcome and inspiring.
When or how he lost track of John Fenton he never knew. He remembered, later on, that as he had left the church he had caught a glimpse of his friend walking down the avenue by the side of Gertrude Van Vleck, but at the moment the sight had made no impression on him. The dominant thought in his mind found expression in the words that seemed to rise uncontrollably to his lips:—
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”