Now, for the first time, this devout, unselfish man understood that something else than consecration is needed to do the best and greatest thing by the human want or woe that leans upon us. Now that he took hold on human experience, he saw that he had everything to learn from it. The knowledge of a great love, the lesson of the common tie that binds the race together—these taught him, and he was their docile scholar.
Five days overdue!... Six days. Bayard had gone back to Boston, to haunt the offices and the docks. Old friends met him among the white-lipped watchers, and a classmate said:—
“Thank God, Bayard, you haven’t wife and child aboard her.”
He added:—
“Man alive! You look like the five days dead!”
Suddenly, the stir ran along the crowd, and a whisper said:—
“They’ve sighted her!... She’s in!”
Then came the hurrah. Shouts of joy reëchoed about him. But Bayard’s head fell upon his breast in silence. At that moment he was touched upon the arm by a beautiful Charter Oak cane, and, looking up, he saw the haggard face of the Professor of Theology.
“I was belated,” thickly articulated the Professor with dry lips. “I came straight from the lecture-room. It is the course on the ‘Nature of Eternal Punishment,’—a most important course. I felt it my duty to be at my desk. But—Bayard, I think I shall substitute to-morrow my lecture (perhaps you may recall it) on the ‘Benevolence and Beneficence of God.’”
The two men leaped into the tug together, and ploughed out to the steamer.