Thus the Ladies’ Aid Association, with flushed cheeks and shrill voices. But the deacons and the pillars of the disturbed church collected in serious groups, and discussed the catastrophe with the dignity of the voting and governing sex.
Sick at heart, and longing to escape from the whole miserable scene, Bayard walked down the street alone. His steps bent blindly to the station. When he had bought his ticket to Boston, it came to him for the first time to ask himself where he was going. Home? What home? Whose? Hermon Worcester’s? That glance at his uncle’s rigid face which he had allowed himself back there in the church recurred to him. The incensed and disappointed man had suffered his smitten boy to go forth from that furnace without a sign of sympathy. He had given Emanuel one look: the pupils of his eyes were dark and dilated with indignation of the kind that a gentleman does not trust himself to express.
“I cannot go home,” said Emanuel suddenly, half aloud. “I forgot that. I shall not be wanted.”
He put his ticket in his wallet and turned away. Some people were hurrying into the station, and he strode to a side door to escape them. The handsome knob of an Oriental grapestick touched his arm. The white face of the Professor of Theology looked sternly into his.
“Suppose you come out to Cesarea with me to-night? We can talk this unfortunate affair over quietly, and—I am sure you misapprehend the real drift of some of these doctrines that disturb you. I believe I could set you right, and possibly—another examination—before a different Council”—
Bayard’s head swam for an instant. A girl in a muslin dress stood at the meeting of the arms of the great cross in the Seminary lawn. It was moonlight, and it was June, and this dreadful thing had never happened. He was in that state when a woman’s sympathy is the only one delicate enough for a man’s bruised nature to bear. He quivered at the thought of being touched by anything harsher than the compassionate approval, the indignant sorrow, the intelligent heart—
“No,” he said, after a scarcely perceptible hesitation. “Thank you, Professor—I can’t do it. I should only disappoint you. I am almost too tired to go all over the ground again. Good-by, Professor.”
He held out his hand timidly. The thin, high-veined hand of the Professor shook as he responded to the grasp.
“I didn’t know,” he said more gently, “but you would be more comfortable. Your uncle”—the Professor hesitated.
“Thank you,” said the young man again. “That was thoughtful in you. If your theology were half as tender as your heart, Professor!” added the poor fellow, trying to smile with the old audacity of Professor Carruth’s pet student. But he shook his head, and pushed out of the door into the street.