Captain Jim came along another evening to bring Anne some mayflowers. The garden was full of the moist, scented air of a maritime spring evening. There was a milk-white mist on the edge of the sea, with a young moon kissing it, and a silver gladness of stars over the Glen. The bell of the church across the harbor was ringing dreamily sweet. The mellow chime drifted through the dusk to mingle with the soft spring-moan of the sea. Captain Jim’s mayflowers added the last completing touch to the charm of the night.
“I haven’t seen any this spring, and I’ve missed them,” said Anne, burying her face in them.
“They ain’t to be found around Four Winds, only in the barrens away behind the Glen up yander. I took a little trip today to the Land-of-nothing-to-do, and hunted these up for you. I reckon they’re the last you’ll see this spring, for they’re nearly done.”
“How kind and thoughtful you are, Captain Jim. Nobody else—not even Gilbert”—with a shake of her head at him—“remembered that I always long for mayflowers in spring.”
“Well, I had another errand, too—I wanted to take Mr. Howard back yander a mess of trout. He likes one occasional, and it’s all I can do for a kindness he did me once. I stayed all the afternoon and talked to him. He likes to talk to me, though he’s a highly eddicated man and I’m only an ignorant old sailor, because he’s one of the folks that’s GOT to talk or they’re miserable, and he finds listeners scarce around here. The Glen folks fight shy of him because they think he’s an infidel. He ain’t that far gone exactly—few men is, I reckon—but he’s what you might call a heretic. Heretics are wicked, but they’re mighty int’resting. It’s jest that they’ve got sorter lost looking for God, being under the impression that He’s hard to find—which He ain’t never. Most of ’em blunder to Him after awhile, I guess. I don’t think listening to Mr. Howard’s arguments is likely to do me much harm. Mind you, I believe what I was brought up to believe. It saves a vast of bother—and back of it all, God is good. The trouble with Mr. Howard is that he’s a leetle TOO clever. He thinks that he’s bound to live up to his cleverness, and that it’s smarter to thrash out some new way of getting to heaven than to go by the old track the common, ignorant folks is travelling. But he’ll get there sometime all right, and then he’ll laugh at himself.”
“Mr. Howard was a Methodist to begin with,” said Miss Cornelia, as if she thought he had not far to go from that to heresy.
“Do you know, Cornelia,” said Captain Jim gravely, “I’ve often thought that if I wasn’t a Presbyterian I’d be a Methodist.”
“Oh, well,” conceded Miss Cornelia, “if you weren’t a Presbyterian it wouldn’t matter much what you were. Speaking of heresy, reminds me, doctor—I’ve brought back that book you lent me—that Natural Law in the Spiritual World—I didn’t read more’n a third of it. I can read sense, and I can read nonsense, but that book is neither the one nor the other.”
“It IS considered rather heretical in some quarters,” admitted Gilbert, “but I told you that before you took it, Miss Cornelia.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have minded its being heretical. I can stand wickedness, but I can’t stand foolishness,” said Miss Cornelia calmly, and with the air of having said the last thing there was to say about Natural Law.