the hidden flame, thesmouldering intensity of the coals at which he gazed. He sat soperhaps half an hour, staring moodily at the orange heart of the fire.Then suddenly, with a smothered half-syllable, with a hand thrown outimpatiently, he was on his feet with a bound, and with that his armswere against the tall mantel and his head dropped in them, and he wasgazing down so and talking aloud, rapidly, disjointedly, out of hisloneliness, to his friend, the red fire. "How can I--how dare I? Asquare peg in a round hole--and the extra corners all weakness andwickedness. Selfishness--incompetence--I to set up to do the Lord'sspecial work! I to preach to others--If it were not blasphemy it wouldbe a joke--a ghastly joke. I can't go on--I have to pull out.Yet--how can I? They'll think--people will think--oh what _does_ itmatter what people will think? Only--if it hurt the rector--if it hurtthe work? And Theodore--but--someone else would do him--more good thanI can. There ought to be--an older man--to belong. Surely God willlook after His gift--His gift!" The quick lightning of the brillianteyes, which in this man often took the place of a smile, flashed; thenthe changing face was suddenly grim with a wrenching feeling, yetbright with a wind of tenderness not to be held back. The soul cameout of hiding and wrote itself on the muscles of the face."She--that's it--that's the gist of it--fool that I am. To think--todream--to dare to hope. But I _don't_ hope," he brought out savagely,and flung his shoulders straight and caught the wooden shelf with agrip. "I don't hope--I just"--the voice dropped, and his head fell onhis arms again. "I won't say it. I'm not utterly mad yet." He pickedup the poker and stirred the fire, and put on coal from a scuttle, andwent and sat down again in the chair. "Something has got to bedecided," he spoke again to the coals in the grate. "I've got to knowif I ought to stay at this job, or if it's an impertinence." Forminutes then he was silent, intent, it seemed, on the fire. Then againhe spoke in the low, clear voice whose simplicity, whose purityreached, though he did not know it, the inmost hearts of the people towhom he preached. "I will make a test of her," he said, telling thefire his decision. "If she is safe and wins through to the realthings, I'll believe that I've been let do that, and that I'm fit forwork. If she doesn't--if I can't pull off that one job which is sodistinctly put up to me--I'll leave." With a swing he had put out thelights in the big, bare living-room and gone into the bedroom beyond.He tried to sleep, but the tortured nerves, the nerves of a high-bredrace-horse, eager, ever ready for action, would not be quiet. Thegreat, rich city, the great poverty-stricken masses seething throughit, the rushing, grinding work of the huge parish, had eaten into hisyouth and strength enormously already in six months. He had givenhimself right and left, suffered with the suffering, as no human beingcan and keep balance, till now he was, unknowingly, at the edge of abreakdown. And the distrust of his own fitness, the forgetfulnessthat, under one's own limitations, is an unlimited reserve which is theonly hope of any of us in any real work; this was the form of theretort of his overwrought nerves. Yet at last he slept.
Meantime as he slept the hours crept away and it was morning and anearly postman came and opened the box with a rattling key and took outthree letters which the deaconess had sent to her scattered family, andone, oddly written, which the janitor had executed for his mother inItaly, and the letter to the girl. From hand to hand it sped, andaway, and was hidden in a sack in a long mail-train, and at last,Robert Halarkenden, on the 25th of September, came down the gardenpath, and the girl, reading in the wild garden, laid aside her book andwatched him as he came, and thought how familiar and pleasant a sightwas the gaunt, tall figure, pausing on the gravelled walk to touch ablossom, to lift a fallen branch, as lovingly as a father would carefor his children. "A letter, lassie," Robert Halarkenden said, andheld out the thick envelope; and then did an extraordinary thing forRobert Halarkenden. He looked at the address in the unmistakable, big,black writing and looked at the girl and stood a moment, with aquestion in his eyes. The girl flushed. "Checkmate in six moves" wasquite enough to say to this girl; one did not have to play the gamebrutally to a finish.
She laughed then. "I knew you must have wondered," she said, and withthat she told the story of the letters.
"It's no wrong," Robert Halarkenden considered.
The girl jumped to her answer. "Wrong!" she cried, "I should say not.It's salvation--hope--life. Maybe all that; at the least it's thepowers of good, fighting for me. Something of the sort--I don't know,"she finished lamely. With that she was deep in her letter and RobertHalarkenden had moved a few yards and was tending a shrub that seemedto need nursing.
October the Sixth.
MY DEAR MR. McBIRNEY--
"The night wind idling down the dusty street"--You do make patterns outof the dictionary which please me. But I know that irritates you, forwords are not what you are paying attention to--of course--if theywere, yours wouldn't be so wonderful. It's the wind of the spirit thatblows them into beautiful shapes for you, I suppose. To let that go,for it's immaterial--you think I might have a job? I? That I might doa real thing for anybody ever? If you only knew me. If you only couldsee the mountains of whipped cream and Maraschino cherries, the cliffsof French clothes and automobiles, the morasses of afternoon teas anddances and calls and luxury in general that lie between me and anyusefulness. It's the maddest dream that I, with my bones and my moneyand my bringing up, all my crippling ailments, could ever, _ever_ climbthose mountains and cliffs and wade through those bogs. It's mad, Isay, you visionary, you man on the other side of all that, who areliving, who are doing things. I never can--I never can. And yet, it'sso terrible, it's so horrible, so frightening, so desperate, sometimes,to be drowning in luxury. I woke in the night last night and before myeyes had opened I had flung out my hand and cried out loud in the dark:"What shall I do with my life--Oh what shall I do with my life?" Andit isn't just me--though that's the burning, close question to mysimple selfishness. But it's a lot of women--a lot. We're waking allover the world. We want to help, to be worth while; to help, to count.It won't do much longer to know French and Italian and play middlingtennis and be on the Altar Society. You know what I mean. Allthat--yes--but beyond that the power which a real person carries intoall that to make it big. The stronger you are the better your work is.I want to be strong, to be useful, to touch things with a personalitywhich will move them, make them go, widen them. How? How can I? Whatcan I do, ever? Oh what _can_ I do--_what_ can I do--with my life! Ithought that day in August that it was only my illness, and my tie toan unloved man, but it's more than that. You have broadened the fieldof my longing, my restlessness, till it covers--everything. Help methen, for you have waked me to this want, question, agony. It's notonly if I may kill my life--it's what I can do if I don't kill it.What can I do? Do you feel how that's a sharp, vital question to me?It's out of the deep I'm calling to you--do you know that? And it's myvoice, but it's the voice of thousands--_now_ you're in trouble. Nowyou wish you'd let me alone, for here we are at the woman question! Ican see you shy at that. But I'm not going to pin you, for you onlycontracted to help me; I'll shake off the other thousands for thepresent. And, anyhow, can you help me? Oh, you have--you've delayedmy--crime, I suppose it is. You've given me glimpses of vistas; you'veset me reading books; widened every sort of horizon; you've even mademe dream of a vague, possible work, for me. Yes, I've been dreamingthat; a specific thing which I might do, even I, if I could cancel somehouse-parties, and a trip to France, and the hunting. But even if Icould possibly give up those things, there's Uncle Ted. He's not well,and my dream would involve leaving him. And I'm all he has. We twoare startlingly alone. After all, you see, it's a dream; I'm not bigenough to do more than that--dream idly. Robin has a queer scheme justnow. There's a bone-ologist here, the most famous one of the planet,exported from France, to cure the small son of one of the trillionaireswith which this place reeks, and Robin insists that I see thatbone-ologist about my bones. It's unpleasant, and I hate doctors and Idon't know if I will. But Robin is very firm and insists on my te
llingUncle Ted otherwise. I can't bother Uncle Ted. So I may do it. Yet,if the great man pronounced, as he would, that the other doctors wereright, it would be almost going through the first hideous shock overagain. So I may _not_ do it. I must stop writing. I have a guest andmust do a party for her. She's a California heiress--oh fabulouslyrich--much richer than I. With splendid bones. I gave her a dancelast night and this morning she's off on my best hunter with myfiance--save the mark! He admires her, and she certainly is a nicegirl, and lovely to
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