THE FELL FINGER OF CALUMNY SEEMS TO BE AGREEABLY DIVERTED

Shut in his study, the rector of St. Antipas paced the floor with nicely measured steps, or sat at his desk to make endless squares, circles, and triangles.  He was engrossed in the latter diversion when he heard the bell sound below.  He sat back to hear the steps of the maid, the opening of the door; then, after an interval, her steps ascending the stairs and stopping at his own door; then her knock.

“A letter for Mr. Bernal, sir!”

He glanced at the envelope she held, noting its tint.

“He’s not here Nora.  Take it to Mrs. Linford.  She will know where he is.”

He heard her go down the hall and knock at another door.  She was compelled to knock twice, and then there was delay before the door opened.

He drew some pages of manuscript before him and affected to be busy at a work of revision, crossing out a word here, interlining one there, scanning the result with undivided attention.

When he heard a knock he did not look up, but said, “Come!” Though still intent at his work, he knew that Nancy stood there, looking from the letter to him.

“Nora said you sent this letter to me ­it’s for Bernal ­”

He answered, still without looking up,

“I thought he might be with you, or that you might know where he was.”

“I don’t.”

He knew that she studied the superscription of the envelope.

“Well, leave it here on my desk till he comes.  I sent it to you only because I heard him inquiring if a letter had not come for him ­he seemed rather anxious about some letter ­troubled, in fact ­doubtless some business affair.  I hoped this might be what he was expecting.”

His eyes were still on the page before him, and he crossed out a word and wrote another above it, after a meditative pause.  Still the woman at the door hesitated.

“Did you chance to notice the address on the envelope?”

He glanced at her now for the first time, apparently in some surprise:  “No ­it is not my custom to study addresses of letters not my own.  Nora said it was for Bernal and he had seemed really distressed about some letter or message that didn’t come ­if you will leave it here ­”

“I wish to hand it to him myself.”

“As you like.”  He returned to his work, crossing out a whole line and a half with broad, emphatic marks.  Then he bent lower, and the interest in his page seemed to redouble, for he heard the door of Bernal’s room open.  Nancy called: 

“Bernal!”

He came to the door where she stood and she stepped a little inside so that he might enter.

“I am anxious about a letter.  Ah, you have it!”

She was scanning him with a look that was acid to eat out any untruth in his face.

“Yes ­it just came.”  She held it out to him.  He looked at the front of the envelope, then up to her half-shut eager eyes ­eyes curiously hardened now ­then he blushed flagrantly ­a thorough, riotous blush ­and reached for the letter with a pitiful confusion of manner, not again raising his uneasy eyes to hers.

“I was expecting ­looking ­for a message, you know ­yes, yes ­this is it ­thank you very much, you know!”

He stammered, his confusion deepened.  With the letter clutched eagerly in his hand he went out.

She looked after him, intently.  When he had shut his own door she glanced over at the inattentive Allan, once more busy at his manuscript and apparently unconscious of her presence.

A long time she stood in silence, trying to moderate the beating of her heart.  Once she turned as if to go, but caught herself and turned again to look at the bent head of Allan.

At last it seemed to her that she could trust herself to speak.  Closing the door softly, she went to the big chair at the end of the desk.  As she let herself go into this with a sudden joy in the strength of its supporting arms, her husband looked up at her inquiringly.

She did not speak, but returned his gaze; returned it, with such steadiness that presently he let his own eyes go down before hers with palpable confusion, as if fearing some secret might lie there plain to her view.  His manner stimulated the suspicion under which she now seemed to labour.

“Allan, I must know something at once very clearly.  It will make a mighty difference in your life and in mine.”

“What is it you wish to know?” His glance was oblique and his manner one of discomfort, the embarrassed discomfort of a man who fears that the real truth ­the truth he has generously striven to withhold ­is at last to come out.

“That letter which Bernal was so troubled about came from ­from that woman ­how could I avoid seeing that when it was handed to me?  Did you know it, too?”

“Why, Nancy ­I knew ­of course ­I knew he expected ­I mean the poor boy told me ­” Here he broke off in the same pitiful confusion that had marked Bernal’s manner at the door ­the confusion of apprehended deceit.  Then he began again, as if with gathered wits ­“What was I saying?  I know nothing whatever of Bernal’s affairs or his letters.  Really, how should I?  You see, I have work on my mind.”  As if to cover his awkwardness, he seized his pen and hastily began to cross out a phrase on the page before him.

“Allan!” Though low, it was so near a cry that he looked up in what seemed to be alarm.  She was leaning forward in the chair, one hand reaching toward him over the desk, and she spoke rapidly.

“Allan, I find myself suspecting now that you tried to deceive me this afternoon ­that Bernal did, also, incredible as it sounds ­that you tried to take the blame of that wretched thing off his shoulders.  That letter to him indicates it, his own pitiful embarrassment just now ­oh, an honest man wouldn’t have looked as he did! ­your own manner at this instant.  You are both trying ­Oh, tell me the truth now! ­you’ll never dream how badly I need it, what it means to my whole life ­tell me, Allan ­for God’s sake be honest this instant ­my poor head is whirling with all the lies!  Let me feel there is truth somewhere.  Listen.  I swear I’ll stay by it, wherever it takes me ­here or away from here ­but I must have it.  Oh, Allan, if it should be in you, after all ­Allan! dear, dear ­Oh!  I do see it now ­you can’t deceive ­you can’t deceive!”

Slowly at first his head bent under her words, bent in cowardly evasion of her sharp glance, the sidelong shiftings of his eyes portraying him, the generous liar, brought at last to bay by his own honest clumsiness.  Then, as her appeal grew warmer, tenderer, more insistent, the fine head was suddenly erected and proud confession was written plainly over the glowing face ­that beautiful contrition of one who has willed to bear a brother’s shame and failed from lack of genius in the devious ways of deceit.

Now he stood nobly from his chair and she was up with a little loving rush to his arms.  Then, as he would have held her protectingly, she gently pushed away.

“Don’t ­don’t take me yet, dear ­I should be crying in another moment ­I’m so ­so beaten ­and I want not to cry till I’ve told you, oh, so many things!  Sit again and let us talk calmly first.  Now why ­why did you pretend this wretched thing?”

He faced her proudly, with the big, honest, clumsy dignity of a rugged man ­and there was a loving quiet in his tones that touched her ineffably.

“Poor Bernal had told me his ­his contretemps.  The rest is simple.  He is my brother.  The last I remember of our mother is her straining me to her poor breast and saying, ‘Oh, take care of little Bernal!’” Tears were glistening in his eyes.

“From the very freedom of the poor boy’s talk about religious matters, it is the more urgent that his conduct be irreproachable.  I could not bear that even you should think a shameful thing of him.”

She looked at him with swimming eyes, yet held her tears in check through the very excitement of this splendid new admiration for him.

“But that was foolish ­quixotic ­”

“You will never know, little woman, what a brother’s love is.  Don’t you remember years ago I told you that I would stand by Bernal, come what might.  Did you think that was idle boasting?”

“But you were willing to have me suspect that of you!”

He spoke with a sad, sweet gentleness now, as one might speak who had long suffered hurts in secret.

“Dearest ­dear little woman ­I already knew that I had been unable to retain your love ­God knows I tried ­but in some way I had proved unworthy of it.  I had come to believe ­painful and humiliating though that belief was ­that you could not think less of me ­your words to-night proved that I was right ­you would have gone away, even without this.  But at least my poor brother might still seem good to you.”

“Oh, you poor, foolish, foolish, man ­And yet, Allan, nothing less than this would have shown you truly to me.  I can speak plainly now ­indeed I must, for once.  Allan, you have ways ­mannerisms ­that are unfortunate.  They raised in me a conviction that you were not genuine ­that you were somehow false.  Don’t let it hurt now, dear, for see ­this one little unstudied, impetuous act of devotion, simple and instinctive with your generous heart, has revealed your true self to me as nothing else could have done.  Oh, don’t you see how you have given me at last what I had to have, if we were to live on together ­something in you to hold to ­a foundation to rest upon ­something I can know in my heart of hearts is stable ­despite any outward, traitorous seeming!  Now forever I can be loving, and loyal, in spite of all those signs which I see at last are misleading.”

Again and again she sought to envelope him with acceptable praises, while he gazed fondly at her from that justified pride in his own stanchness ­murmuring, “Nance, you please me ­you please me!”

“Don’t you see, dear?  I couldn’t reach you before.  You gave me nothing to believe in ­not even God.  That seeming lack of genuineness in you stifled my soul.  I could no longer even want to be good ­and all that for the lack of this dear foolish bit of realness in you.”

“No one can know better than I that my nature is a faulty one, Nance ­”

“Say unfortunate, Allan ­not faulty.  I shall never again believe a fault of you.  How stupid a woman can be, how superficial in her judgments ­and what stupids they are who say she is intuitive!  Do you know, I believed in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, and Bernal made me believe in everything else ­in God and goodness and virtue and truth ­in all the good things we like to believe in ­yet see what he did!”

“My dear, I know little of the circumstances, but ­”

“It isn’t that ­I can’t judge him in that ­but this I must judge ­Bernal, when he saw I did not know who had been there, was willing I should think it was you.  To retain my respect he was willing to betray you.”  She laughed, a little hard laugh, and seemed to be in pain.  “You will never know just what the thought of that boy has been to me all these years, and especially this last week.  But now ­poor weak Bernal!  Poor Judas, indeed!” There was a kind of anguished bitterness in the last words.

“My dear, try not to think harshly of the poor boy,” remonstrated Allan gently.  “Remember that whatever his mistakes, he has a good heart ­and he is my brother.”

“Oh! you big, generous, good-thinking boy, you ­Can’t you see that is precisely what he lacks ­a good heart?  Oh, dearest, I needed this ­to show Bernal to me not less than to show you to me.  There were grave reasons why I needed to see you both as I see you this moment.”

There were steps along the hall and a knock at the door.

“It must be Bernal,” he said ­“he was to leave about this time.”

“I can’t see him again.”

“Just this once, dear ­for my sake!  Come!”

Bernal stood in the doorway, hat in hand, his bag at his feet.  With his hat he held a letter.  Allan went forward to meet him.  Nancy stood up to study the lines of an etching on the wall.

“I’ve come to say good-bye, you know.”  She heard the miserable embarrassment of his tones, and knew, though she did not glance at him, that there was a shameful droop to his whole figure.

Allan shook hands with him, first taking the letter he held.

“Good-bye ­old chap ­God bless you!”

He muttered, with that wretched consciousness of guilt, something about being sorry to go.

“And I don’t want to preach, old chap,” continued Allan, giving the hand a farewell grip, “but remember there are always two pairs of arms that will never be shut to you, the arms of the Church of Him who died to save us, ­and my own poor arms, hardly less loving.”

“Thank you, old boy ­I’ll go back to Hoover” ­he looked hesitatingly at the profile of Nancy ­“Hoover thinks it’s all rather droll, you know ­Good-bye, old boy!  Good-bye, Nancy.”

“My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye.”

She turned and said “good-bye.”  He stepped toward her ­seeming to her to slink as he walked ­but he held out his hand and she gave him her own, cold, and unyielding.  He went out, with a last awkward “Good-bye, old chap!” to Allan.

Nancy turned to face her husband, putting out her hands to him.  He had removed from its envelope the letter Bernal had left him, and seemed about to put it rather hastily into his pocket, but she seized it playfully, not noting that his hand gave it up with a certain reluctance, her eyes upon his face.

“No more business to-night ­we have to talk.  Oh, I must tell you so much that has troubled me and made me doubt, my dear ­and my poor mind has been up and down like a see-saw.  I wonder it’s not a wreck.  Come, put away your business ­there.”  She placed the letter and its envelope on the desk.

“Now sit here while I tell you things.”

An hour they were there, lingering in talk ­talking in a circle; for at regular intervals Nancy must return to this:  “I believe no wife ever goes away until there is absolutely no shred of possibility left ­no last bit of realness to hold her.  But now I know your stanchness.”

“Really, Nance ­I can’t tell you how much you please me.”

There was a knock at the door.  They looked at each other bewildered.

“The telephone, sir,” said the maid in response to Allan’s tardy “Come in.”

When he had gone, whistling cheerily, she walked nervously about the room, studying familiar objects from out of her animated meditation.

Coming to his desk, she snuggled affectionately into his chair and gazed fondly over its litter of papers.  With a little instinctive move to bring somewhat of order to the chaos, she reached forward, but her elbow brushed to the floor two or three letters that had lain at the edge of the desk.

As she stooped to pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly legible characters.  And then, quite before she recognised what letter it was, or could feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of it had flashed irrevocably to her mind’s centre.

When Allan appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, she was standing by the desk.  She held the letter in both hands and over it her eyes flamed ­blasted.

Divining what she had done, his mind ran with lightning quickness to face this new emergency.  But he was puzzled and helpless, for now her hands fell and she laughed weakly, almost hysterically.  He searched for the key to this unnatural behaviour.  He began, hesitatingly, expecting some word from her to guide him along the proper line of defense.

“I am sure, my dear ­if you had only ­only trusted me ­implicitly ­your opinion of this affair ­”

At the sound of his voice she ceased to laugh, stiffening into a wild, grim intensity.

“Now I can look that thing straight in the eyes and it can’t hurt me.”

“In the eyes?” he questioned, blankly.

“I can go now.”

“You will make me the laughing-stock of this town!”

For the first time in their life together there was the heat of real anger in his voice.  Yet she did not seem to hear.

“Yes ­that last terrible Gratcher can’t hurt me now.”

He frowned, with a sulky assumption of that dignity which he felt was demanded of him.

“I don’t understand you!”

Still the unseeing eyes played about him, yet she heard at last.

“But he will ­he will!” she cried exultingly, and her eyes were wet with an unexplained gladness.