Philip Hardman was no longer a recognized minister of the Church. His doubts had grown too strong for his belief, or his beliefs had grown greater than his creed; and he had gone forth from the church to become an itinerant preacher, like the man Christ Jesus. He was miserably uncertain and unsettled.
Little bands of devotees gathered about him in every town he visited. They were those who were mentally maimed, or halt, or blind; those whose aspirations exceeded their capabilities; those in whose hearts a never-healing sore throbbed in unison with the suffering of mankind; those who were, like Philip Hardman, striving to flee from the wrath to come and found themselves bewildered amid the crossways. His followers were, in all places, strangely alike. They gathered to him gradually, and when he left they scattered. There was no unity of purpose among them, no common determination toward one end, to bind them together.
The Western worlds are not ready yet for those creedless, formless, Eastern doctrines of Universal Love. Poor Philip Hardman, in an Oriental world, would have made an excellent devotee, to dream away his years in spiritual abstraction with the best of them; nay, he might even have found courage to release his soul by fire from its earthly charnel like the old East Indians; but he made a poor minister; he was a good enough preacher, eloquent enough, and earnest enough, pitiful towards others, merciless to himself; but, constantly bewildered by the indefiniteness of his own aspirations, he could not minister any healing balm to the sorrows he deplored.
He never felt awkward nor constrained with his followers, only desperately unhappy. They looked to him for a message, and he had none to give them; he raised hopes in their breasts which he could not justify; held out a cup which proved empty when thirsty lips drew near.
When he left a town he was haunted for days by the yearning eyes he had left unlit by hope; yet he could not bring himself to desert the cross utterly, for
"Ever on the faint and flagging air
A doleful spirit with a dreary note
Cried in his fearful ear, 'Prepare—Prepare!'"
So he had stumbled on, the strong in him strong only to discern the needs, the wants, the sadness and cruelty of the world, not strong enough to evolve a creed of Truth to alleviate its misery; the weak in him only weak enough to make him shrink from giving up utterly the old dogmas that hampered his hands, not weak enough to permit him to steep himself in scriptural ease and spend all his time striving to save his own miserable soul.
Hardman had come to the charity ward of the hospital to be treated for that common and troublesome disease familiarly known as "preacher's sore throat." It was a very natural result of speaking night after night in all sorts of weathers in the open air. He had persisted in his preaching, however, until his voice had become attenuated almost to a whisper; then suddenly realizing the gravity of his case, he had fled to the hospital in a panic. Myron's post was in the charity ward, by far the most arduous department in the hospital. Thus Hardman came directly under her care.
Relieved from the nervous excitement of his occupation, Hardman's fictitious strength suddenly collapsed, and, having squandered his resources recklessly, he was now left with very little stamina to fall back upon. But Myron tended him night and day, throwing into her efforts all the determination of her strong nature; and, little by little, she conquered. Philip Hardman himself had been as passive during the struggle as a bone for which two dogs fight; but after the fever left him he began to realize how nearly his doubts and surmises had been all solved, and looking at Myron's weary face read in a moment all the meaning of its weariness. From that time her care was seconded by his eager desire for health.
Then there fell upon those two that strange enchantment which entered the world when the first bird sang its first love song, which will endure till "the last bird fly into the last night."