"I've knowed him sence he was a boy. He's in disgrace, Simeon Calthrop is," shrieked the Captain, preventing the preacher from answering Cleggett's question, and scorning to answer it directly himself. "Been kicked out of his church fur kissin' a married woman, and can't get another one." (The Cap'n meant another church.)
The preacher merely raised his eyes, which were large and brown and slightly protuberant, and murmured with a kind of brave humility:
"It is true."
"But why do you want to go to Palestine?" said Cleggett.
"She sung in the choir and she had three children," screamed Cap'n Abernethy, "and she limped some. Folks say she had a cork foot. Hey, Simeon, DID she have a cork foot?"
Mr. Calthrop flushed painfully, but he forced himself courageously to answer. "Mr. Abernethy, I do not know," he said humbly, and with the look of a stricken animal in his big brown eyes.
He was a handsome young fellow of about thirty—or he would have been handsome, Cleggett thought, had he not been so emaciated. His hair was dark and brown and inclined to curl, his forehead was high and white and broad, and his fingers were long and white and slender; his nose was well modeled, but his lips were a trifle too full. Although he belonged to one of the evangelical denominations, the Rev. Mr. Calthrop affected clothing very like the regulation costume of the Episcopalian clergy; but this clothing was now worn and torn and dusty. Buttons were gone here and there; the knees of the unpressed trousers were baggy and beginning to be ragged, and the sole of one shoe flapped as he walked. He had a three days' growth of beard and no baggage.
When Cap'n Abernethy had delivered himself and walked away, the Rev. Mr. Calthrop confirmed the story of his own disgrace, speaking in a low but clear voice, and with a gentle and wistful smile.
"I am one of the most miserable of sinners, Mr. Cleggett," he said. "I have proved myself to be that most despicable thing, an unworthy minister. I was tempted and I fell."
The Rev. Mr. Calthrop seemed to find the sort of satisfaction in confessing his sins to the world that the medieval flagellants found in scoring themselves with whips; they struck their bodies; he drew forth his soul and beat it publicly.