Then there was seen upon the beach, and quite apart from the throng, a little group of nameless women, standing with their backs to the sacred scene. Some one—Job Slip, perhaps, or Captain Hap—started with an exclamation of horror to suppress the disturbance, when the preacher’s lifted hand withstood him. To the consternation of his church officers, and to the astonishment of his audience, Bayard deliberately left the desk, and, passing through the throng, which respectfully divided before him to left and right, himself approached the women.
“Lena!... Magdalena!”
He said but that word. The girl looked up—and down. She felt as if an archangel from the heavens, commissioned with the rebuke of God, had smitten her with something far more terrible—the mercy of man.
“You disturb us, Lena,” said the preacher gently. “Come.”
She followed him; and the girls behind her. They hung their heads. Lena scrawled she knew not what with the tip of her gaudy parasol upon the beach. Her heavy eyes traced the little pebbles in the sand. For her life, she thought, she could not have lifted her smarting lids. Till that moment, perhaps, Lena had never known what shame meant. It overwhelmed her, like the deluge which one dreams may foretell the end of the world.
The street girls followed the preacher silently. He conducted them gently through the throng, and seated them quite near the desk or table which served him as a pulpit. Some of his people frowned. The girls looked abashed at this courtesy.
Bayard ignored both evidences of attention to his unexpected act, passing it by as a matter of course, and without further delay made signs to his singers, and the service began.
Was it magic or miracle? Was it holiness or eloquence? Did he speak with the tongue of man or of angel? Where was the secret? What was the charm? Not a man or woman of them could have answered, but not a soul of them could have gainsaid the power of the preacher; the Professor of Theology least of all. This learned man stood the service out, upon the beach, behind the camp-chairs of his wife and daughter, and knew neither fatigue nor the critical faculty, till the beautiful worship drew to its end.