"Harold might say a lot of absurd things about it"--John smiled indulgently--"but he is no criterion, either."
"Well, I'll tell you what he'd say, and it is my opinion, too," the girl went on. "He'd say that the very intuitive feeling you say you have--your firm confidence of her existence, is due to the fact that she has passed from this plane of life, is now on another, and that she is always with you in spirit because she loved you once, still loves you, and wants to protect you. Don't you see how pretty that is, brother John? She has become, as Harold would say, your guardian angel, your very conscience. When you are tempted to do wrong she restrains you; and when you actually do something wrong she has a way of rebuking you through your intuition."
This argument displeased John, as all such theories did. He claimed, with many of his rather materialistic friends, that to believe in a blissful life to come only rendered one less useful in the present, and was a strong proof of innate selfishness in the individual who was seeking it for himself alone.
But he let Dora have her way, and why shouldn't he? Indeed, he was almost sure that she and Harold were falling in love with each other.
Harold was preaching now in a small church on the west side of the city, and his mother and sisters and Dora were diligent helpers in many ways.
"I'm becoming sure," Mrs. McGwire said, with a smile, one day to John as they lingered at the breakfast-table after Betty and Dora had left, "that Dora and Harold are very much in love, and I'm glad of it. A minister ought to marry early, and your sister, of all girls, is the one I'd want for him."
"So it is like that, is it?" John said, resignedly. "Well, I have no objections, I'm sure. I want her to be happy."
CHAPTER II
One evening, shortly after that, Harold came into John's room, saying that he wanted to speak to him in private. He was slightly above medium height, quite thin, and attenuated-looking. He wore the black frock-coat, high, stiff collar, and black necktie of his calling. For a man of less than twenty-four years of age he certainly was grave and serious-looking. He was endeavoring to produce a show of whiskers on his cheeks and chin, but the effort was almost in vain, for the hairs grew sparsely and were of a color between yellow and light brown that did not make for density of appearance. However, he was earnest and sincere, and John liked and trusted him.
"I've been wanting to see you for some time, Mr. Trott," he began, taking a chair that was vacant near John's and linking his white hands between his knees. "I don't know what you will think of me, but I've had the audacity to fall in love with your sister, and, as I look upon you as her guardian and protector, I felt honor-bound to come to you."
"I see, I see." John had flushed with embarrassment. "Well, the truth is, Harold, I have been suspecting something of this sort lately, and I can imagine what you want to say."
Harold had never been one to give in to embarrassment. Life was too serious and needed too many corrections to justify him in losing time or emotion in that way, so without change of color, or quickened pulse, he went on. "I have reason to believe, Mr. Trott, that Dora reciprocates my feeling, and you may be sure that it has given me great happiness. She is wrapped up in my work, and I know of no woman who would so readily adapt herself to the routine of a minister's career. The only thing bothering us both has been--"
For the first time Harold hesitated.
"Go ahead," said John, awkwardly, and quite unaware of what was forthcoming.
"You see, I know what she has been to you all these years," Harold resumed, "and we both know, too, what your religious, or lack of religious, views are, and it has pained me to think that perhaps you would prefer as Dora's husband a man of--well, a man whose views were more in accord with your own than mine can ever possibly be."
Not knowing what to say, John hung fire. He had always been outspoken where his views were directly challenged, and, despite the delicacy of the present crisis, he had nothing to take back. All things being equal, he really would have preferred to have his protegee marry, if she married at all, a man whose calling he could be proud of. He had ridiculed parsons as the most parasitical of all men, and yet here he was about to hand over to one of them the only human treasure he possessed.
"I see you understand me," Harold half sighed, "and I am not so full of religious zeal as not to sympathize with you. I don't see how a man can live without more faith than you have, but I admire your firmness of conviction in what you think is right. You may call yourself an atheist, Mr. Trott, but you really are not one. A great man has said that there are no atheists--that every man who does good, defends goodness, and contends against evil of any sort has as good a god as any one. I don't agree with him fully, but I know that what you did for Dora, full of despair as you were at the time, proves that you had divinity in you.
That act was godlike and had to have a source outside of mere animal instinct."
John was touched. He held out his hand. "Let all that pass, Harold," he smiled. "I am sure that Dora loves you, and I want to make her happy.
You are her choice. You have a right to her."
"I thank you," Harold responded, with his first touch of emotion. There was silence for a moment, then Harold said: "There is yet another matter, Mr. Trott, and both Dora and I are worried over it. It belongs to a little secret of ours. We have not even told my mother yet, and we dread doing so. Mr. Trott, I have just received an appointment to a desirable post among the missionaries in China."
"China!" John repeated, his honest mouth drooping, his eyes taking on a dull fixity of gaze.
Harold shrugged and nodded. "I thought that would pain you, and so did Dora, but there is nothing else to do but to tell you about it frankly.
The heads of the work prefer men with wives, and Dora has her heart set on aiding me in the Orient."
The smoldering embers of John's antagonism under its threatened blight flared up. His blood flowed hotly to his brain. He knew that the separation would be for years if not for all time, and how could he be expected to submit calmly to such a heartless course? Could Dora find it in her gentle nature to desert him like that after all they had been to each other?
"I see that you are hurt," Harold sighed, softly, "and I am more than sorry, Mr. Trott."
John's anger was dying down; a cool breath of sheer despair and resignation seemed to blow over him. How could he live on alone? he wondered, and yet the thing proposed was the logical outcome of many natural circumstances and had to be borne.
"I believe," John answered, "that the missionaries, once they leave, do not return to America frequently?"
"No, they are all poor people, Mr. Trott, and the money saved from such costly traveling expenses can be well used in other ways."
"We'll let that pass," John said, "and come to something else. I have put by a little money to be given or left to Dora, and--"
But raising his hand, and flushing freely now, Harold checked him.
"Don't speak of that, Mr. Trott, please!" he urged. "Dora mentioned something of the sort to me. She said you had thrown out some hint of it recently, and she and I talked it over. We both decided that we'd rather not let you do anything of the sort. You are a young man yourself, and have already done a thousand times more than your duty to Dora. Indeed, we'd both feel very unhappy if you carried out such a plan. You laugh at men of my calling and say they are grafters, but it is really not as you think. Most of the missionaries I've met are poor men, and they are willing to remain so. It would be an absurdity for Dora and me to accept help from you, when our organization is pledged to see that superannuated ministers and their wives are cared for as long as they live."
John was about to speak, vaguely pleased by the manliness of Harold's words, when Dora suddenly came in. Her face was flushed, but her eyes were steady. She stood by Harold's side, who had risen, and smiled half fearfully at John.
"Well, have you told him?" she asked Harold.
He nodded, and put his arm around her waist.
"I mean, have you told him about China?" she went on, anxiously.
"Yes"--with a smile--"and that we simply will not let him give us any of his hard-earned money."
"No, indeed, brother John," Dora cried. "Not a penny of your money will I take after all you have done for me. You must get married--you must be sensible and find you a good wife. You will need all the money you have, too. It is bad enough--my leaving you like this--without taking your savings. We simply won't hear to it, will we, Harold?"
"No," the other answered, firmly. "We'd be acting a lie if we teach others that poverty and humility are a blessing while having a nest-egg of our own."
"Now hear from me." Dora tried to speak with amusing lightness. "While you were here, Harold, exploding your bomb, I've been telling your mother. She is down in her room, crying her heart out. She takes it very hard. It has been the pride of her life that you are a minister, but she never dreamed that she'd miss hearing you preach every Sunday of her life, and help you with your work besides. That's the mother of it, and this is really the hardest blow she's ever had."
There was a sound of a dog barking down-stairs. It was John's pet fox-terrier, Binks.
"He is after a rat," Dora said, forcing a smile to her set face and somehow not wanting to meet the eyes of the stricken man.
"Yes"--John rose--"it is time for me to take him out. He stays in too much." John knew that he was expected to say more on the other subject, but all at once his tongue had become tied. An indescribable despair incased him like walls of sinister darkness. The young couple seemed to feel his mood and to be baffled by it, standing in the presence of his disappointment as if conscious of actual guilt in causing it. Neither said anything, and John got his hat and descended to his dog.
They heard him whistling to Binks as if nothing unusual had happened.
They heard the yelping animal scampering up the basement steps to meet him. Creeping wordless, and hand in hand, to the stairs, they saw John bend down and take the dog in his arms. Binks was licking the side of his face, and John seemed unconscious of it. The mute watchers heard the front door close after him. Dora turned back into John's room. She was wiping her eyes. Harold took her into his arms.
"Don't, don't, dear!" he said, tenderly. "It can't be helped, you know.
He will suffer--another will suffer, but it has to be. We all bear a cross of some sort or other."
"I know it," she continued to sob, "but it is terrible. Harold, I have never seen such a look on his face as was on it when I came in the room just now. He looked as if he had lost every hope in life. I didn't think I'd ever wound him like this. I used to tell him that he and I would be near together always--if he married or if I married. You see, I know he counted on it, for he mentioned it frequently. Wasn't that pitiful--taking Binks up that way? I could almost hear him sob."
"You are too sentimental, dear," Harold answered, trying to disguise his own emotion, which perhaps Dora's melting mood had elicited. "You soft-hearted women are always attributing your own feelings to men.
He'll soon get over it. Besides, a man as young as he is ought not to become a confirmed old bachelor, and this very separation may drive him into a happiness as normal as yours and mine is going to be."
"I hope so--oh, I hope so!" Dora whimpered, still wiping her eyes. "If he should remain unhappy here I am afraid I'd not be wholly content away from him."
"He'll marry, don't worry," Harold said, kissing her again. "He's bound to do so. He is too fine a man to pass his life in loneliness."