The strongest master

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Chapter I

«¢Go on, Mumsie, — finish up the story, just as you used to when I was a kid. I feel like hearing it again to-night.”

“Then the giant realized that the Child under whose weight he bent was stronger than the great King he had first served, stronger even than the Devil for whom he had worked later; and by the time he had struggled to the other bank of the river he was almost exhausted. As the Child stood on dry land suddenly a brilliant light shone about him, and he said: ‘Henceforth shalt thou be known as Christopher, the Christ-bearer ; and in token of the truth of what I say, thy dry staff planted in the earth shall bloom and flourish.’ At these words the vision vanished, but the flowering staff remained to show Christopher that it had been no mere dream ; that he had truly earned the right to bear his new name, and to serve Him whom he had always sought, the strongest Master.”

_ As the voice, feeble, but with a ring of intellectual power quite apart from physical force, ceased, silence fell upon the room where mother and son were. Mrs. Waring’s couch had been wheeled close to the wide window, whose three divisions were uncurtained from the night, so that she and Christopher seemed to be in the heart of the moonlit landscape. The upper room that had been her home for nearly half her life was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp, and the walls of an atmospheric blue melted into the misty violet haze without, which softened the sharp outlines of trees whose buds were waiting for the first hot April sun to swelland burst. Low bookcases well filled could be seen in every available place; a few good pictures hung on the walls, among them a reproduction of the Saint Christopher, taken from the Grimani Missal; there were flowers on the tables, chairs grouped in social relations, and a general air of | cultivation and comfort. The woman whose presence filled the room almost palpably was placed so that the rosy lamplight behind her outlined her head, touching the delicate oval of one white cheek, while the reflected shimmer of the moon brought her features into view. Although a hopeless invalid, Mrs. Waring never gave one an impression of suffering ; instead, one carried away the memory of unusual animation, of deep eyes under high arched brows that changed to every mood, of a sensitive mouth that could be very firm, and of a low, broad forehead over which waved dark, glossy brown hair. Everything about her spoke of will, intellect, and a spirituality that animated her entire personality. ‘T’o those who best knew, and therefore loved her, she was the embodiment of an allembracing sympathy. Among these her son Christopher stood first, there being a rare understanding between the secluded invalid and the active, pleasure-loving student. Since he could remember, Chris had passed every Easter Eve with his mother. For many years had the Paschal moonlight flooded the valley as now, while those two looked across the river, which caught fugitive reflections of the moon, to the vague outlines of the low, billowy hills bounding the southern horizon. The rest of the household were at the evening service, and the house below was still.

Chris was lying on a heap of cushions beside his mother’s couch, his head resting against her white draperies, within reach of her transparent fingers that ruffled his crisp hair, several shades lighter than hers, —a tall, straight, well-made fellow, inheriting his mother’s breadth of forehead and the forcible shape of her head, but with clear steel gray eyes beneath level brows, a shorter, more determined nose, a squarer chin, and a richer mouth. To-night he was playing little boy once more, and there was no trace of the perfectly dressed, smart eollegian, known to most of his world. In spite, however, of his apparent unconcern, there had been something in his voice which troubled her mother ear, more than ordinarily sensitive to any shade in those she loved. There was a long pause after she finished her legend, broken at last by Chris.

“The strongest Master. I say, Mumsie, I wish you ’d tell the Governor to talk more about Christ’s strength in his sermons. Fellows get awfully tired of always hearing about meekness and patience ; it does n’t help us at all, for we all know that we ’ve got to fight every step of our way.”

‘Saint Paul has plenty to say about fighting and girding on one’s armor, Chris, if you will- look for it.”

“Well, I suppose I’m an out and out dullard; but I must say that I get so mixed up with words when the Governor reads from Ephesians, or some of those old chaps, that I can’t understand, and I’ve stopped trying to.”

“‘ Different things appeal to different persons ; my feeling is that we must take our help where we can get it, and that if we are helped really, the gift is divine, no matter from what source.”

Chris patted his mother’s hand ; a college senior may allow himself many privileges that a younger sub-graduate should severely turn his back upon.

‘¢T don’t know how it is, Mumsie,” he said, “ but you seem to have more strength and more help in your little finger than — than most men in their whole bodies. How is it that you, only a woman, lying here, let me see: thunder! it’s nineteen years, isn’t it? Edith was nineteen in February, — that you are so wide I can speak naturally to you; while if I say anything out of the beaten track to my father, he looks shocked, and answers me as if I were a driveling and half dangerous idiot. I swear I don’t understand it.” -

“Chris, I don’t like to have you take that tone about your father ; it is unjust, and shows that you do not understand him. If I seem more appreciative of the ideas that are interesting and stimulating to you, remember how all my days have been my own. I have had no duties, no distractions ; while he has had all the cares of the parish, and Aunt Louisa all the care of the house and you two children. I have had time to read, and to keep up _ with your generation, and he has n’t. That is one of the many compensations of my life.”

“J ’m sorry if I’m unjust; perhaps Iam. But I can’t help thinking that he’d do more good to fellows if he ’d hire some curate to look after the millinery department, and spend his own time in seeing what sort of lives we lead, and what sort of stuff would do us most good. Every now and then it comes over me with a shock that in nineteen hundred years we ’ve got no further ahead than the first old chaps; we ’’ve gone up and down, or round and round, but we’re always at the same place after all.”

“‘ Not quite, Chris.”

“ Almost. Sometimes I think we’ve slipped back. There’s nothing to-day one half so ideal as the Crusades. We could n’t even get a handful of men out of all Christendom to go and rescue the Armenians. I don’t believe there ’s been a single public chivalrous action during this century.”

“¢ How about our civil war? I’m old enough to remember the feelings prompting a great number of the men who gave up their homes, their business, their ease, to join the ranks. My uncle and my father, who had been violent enemies in politics, each went; I remember vaguely, or I may have heard my mother tell it, how they dined at my grandmother’s the night before they were to part, forever as it turned out. My father said that after all 1t was a comfort to feel they were on the same side. ‘Yes,’ said Uncle Roger, ‘ you are fighting to free the slaves, I’m fighting to save the “Union, but as long as we ’re shoulder to shoulder, what does anything else matter?’ My father never came back, and my mother died when I was ten, so you see I had my sacrifices made for me: but they were two out of millions, and I call the motive sending both those men to the war as noble and as chivalrous as that which made the Knights Templar go to the Holy Land.”

“Perhaps. It’s queer, though, how we always get back to fighting, isn’t it? All these centuries, and the result is that our killing machines are a good bit more perfect than an arquebus.”

‘‘It strikes me we have done more than that. But what ’s the matter, old fellow? You are bitter to-night.”

‘Perhaps I am. It has swept over me like a wave that possibly this religion I have been brought up in, that has always been like a high wall behind me, although I have n’t thought much about it, is a bubble, a mistake made by men, —and I feel all wrong somehow.”

“¢ What has made you feel like that, Chris ?”

“Oh, lots of things; but to-night it got on my nerves at dinner when the Governor and Edith and Aunt Louisa were all talking about the number of children to be confirmed, and the altar cloth, and the decorations, as if they were all there was to it. I used to laugh and think what fun it would be to have a phonograph take down the squabbles over choir boys and candles and all the trash; but this evening it angered me; I can’t explain why, but it seemed like an insult to you.”

“‘ Chris,” said Mrs. Waring, with a certain intention in her voice as she laid her hand impressively on his head, “ you are no longer a boy; you are twenty-three; you will graduate in two months — Did I hurt you?” she broke off, lifting her hand quickly as Chris made a sudden movement.

“No; go ahead.”

“‘T feel nearer to you than to any one in the world ; and I can say to you things that would only distress and hurt your father. I of course trust you entirely never to let him know what I say.”

“ Of course not.”

“To him the Church is everything ; it is a gift straight from Christ’s hands, coming down through the ages. To me it is a human institution, and like all inventions of man it must do its work, as it has faithfully, and then give way to new needs. If we lookers-on think it is losing ground, failing, we must double our courage, and remember that this may be the moment for the evolution of new ideas, new faiths. It strikes me that we should think more of humanity ; I don’t mean only hospitals and asylums and charitable establishments, but the right every man has to the divinity within himself ; to his heritage of freedom of belief. Oh, how I long for the time when no one shall think himself better than his neighbor because of his own conceit.”

«¢ Then you don’t believe it can all be solved like a problem in algebra’? Purple altar cloths in Lent, plus twenty-four choir boys, plus x, equal salvation plus y?” |

“No, I don’t; I believe that the divinity of Christ’s words is the great and the only important fact worth noting; that we must live up to what we think is right for us, not for the next man; that we must work for strength without hardness. Try not to be severe, Chris; it’s so difficult for us to separate the two. You will never be hard with your father?” |

“Why, Mumsie, what a queer thing to ask a fellow.”

‘I know it is. But I think that you are starting where he is leaving off; and when I’m not here ” —

‘© Don’t! For God’s sake, don’t talk that way. I can’t bear it to-night.”

‘We must try to bear it. All these years the numbness has been getting higher. I should like to live, though, to see you and Edith started on your life path. She does not perplex me as much as you do; her nature is so simple where yours is complex.”

“ She ’s just about a thousand times better than I,” muttered Chris gruffly.

‘© Hach in your own way, Chris. Now, while the subject is on my mind, let me say a word or two on business matters. You know that my property is settled on you and Edith, and that I have only had the right to the income. The thought of your father has always made me put aside a good third of this income, and my trustees have invested it well, so that when I am gone he and Aunt Louisa will have about the same sum to live on that they have now, for of course I have a right to leave my savings as I wish. Your father is so sensitive — has always been so delicate in his feelings about money — that I have never spoken of this to him. He never looks ahead for himself, I believe; he trusts that all will go well.”

* He has a right to, with you at the helm.”

Mrs. Waring smiled a brilliant, gratified smile, but went on without answering directly: ‘«* Now you, in this way, will be left with what I consider a dangerous sum of money. It’s not enough to let you marry, live a wide, all-round life; and it’s quite enough to let you drift without any spur to exert yourself. I want you to do something with your life, Chris. I want you to find your strongest Master and serve him honestly.”

‘Tl try, Mumsie, but” — His voice died away, the phrase unfinished.

She waited a moment, and then, as he said nothing more, she asked : —

‘¢ Have you made any plans for the future? Or are you waiting until the excitements of Class Day and Commencement are over before you settle down to a decision ? ”

“T can’t talk about myself to-night. There ’s no use trying; I’m not interesting to myself just now.”

¢ What an unnatural man,” laughed his mother, glad to have said what she felt should be realized, and relieved to turn to a lighter strain of talk.

‘¢ There they are,” she said a moment later, as a sound reached her, unnoticed by Chris.

He rose from the floor, shook himself, and strolled about the room, as if trying to rid himself of all present memory of the talk that he and his mother had had.

The front door closed below; there was a swish of skirts, and his sister Edith came softly into the room.

“¢ Here you two are; moonlight and candle-light — What does that remind me of?” she broke off.

“¢ Wire and sleet and candle-light

«¢« And Christ receive his soul.’ Is that what you mean?” asked Mrs. Waring.

“ Yes, that must be it; you always know just what I want to be told,” said Edith, drawing a chair close to the couch. “I suppose you and Kit have been having your service here as usual,” she went on, stroking her mother’s hand. “I never remember an Kaster Eve without you two just as you are this evening — together.”

Without warning a break came into the girl’s voice as she said the last word; together, absolutely together, that was what they always were, — and she just a tiny bit outside. She felt it; there was a difference in their very voices when they were alone ; she had noted the change on coming suddenly upon them ; they laughed at little insignificant things that were not amusing to her; they said half words sometimes, and understood without going on. And yet she knew her mother loved her deeply and devotedly ; there was nothing really to complain of.

«Ts papa coming?” asked Mrs. Waring.

“Yes, he stopped to speak to people; it was such a lovely service, and all went so beautifully, that ever so many waited for him at the door. Aunt Louisa and I came directly home to you ; she ree)

found Polly outside, and is in a terrible state of mind, for she thinks he may have caught cold, it is so damp.”

‘¢ [| wonder if any one ever heard of a cat catching cold. Aunt Louisa is too silly over old Polly ; he ’s as tough as bull beef, and she ought to know it by this time.”

‘“‘ There ’s papa,” said Edith, rising, and paying no attention to her brother’s remark, for she too had her weakness for Polly, and feared that his lungs were delicate.

Some men seem born to impress the women of their family with deep devotion and admiration. Mr. Waring was one of these, and for him his parish was only a continuation of his family. He was one to be looked up to, and yet protected. His great physical beauty contributed much to this result, for it was of a kind that waxed instead of waning with years, the high, pure brow being emphasized in its characteristics by the silvering hair, the ringing voice gaining in pathos, the coloring becoming more delicate. Ever since the day when Anne Salisbury had seen him, a young man just in orders, take his place in a Boston church, and preach a high-minded, spiritual sermon, till this Easter Eve, he had seemed to her the very finest of men. That his fineness lacked virility, that his spirituality was narrow, she had never admitted to herself ; and it was only her intense love for Chris that had made her second nature, as it were, comprehend what he missed in his father. She had always idealized him, from the moment when she, young, handsome, well-born, independently rich, had married him, of humble origin, mediocre education, and utterly without resources. He had been given a parish ina country town about twenty miles from Boston, and there had been spent the rest of their lives. In the same house where they now were, first Chris had been born, and four years later Edith. It was when she was a few weeks old that Mrs. Waring’s accident had happened. Her husband was to take her for her first drive.

He insisted on carrying her in his arms to the carriage ; his foot slipped and he fell headlong, striking her spine with terrible force against the edge of the stone doorstep. She had been carried upstairs unconscious, and ever since had remained there, an incurable invalid. At first there had seemed to be hope; eminent specialists were sent for from all over the country; Mrs. Waring had been tortured by useless remedies. Then came the day when no more treatments were suggested, and she divined the truth. After the first intolerable sensation of being a prisoner, she made up her mind to not only endure, but enjoy her life. Her sister-in-law, an unmarried woman, came to keep house and superintend the children; her faithful Ellen, who had served as nurse for Chris, was put into her old place of maid; the new wing was added, with the wide window in three parts looking over her favorite view. Every comfort possible was procured for her, and as the suffering became more negative, the habit of bearing it became simpler, and Mrs. Waring lived in a world of her own. It was a world of few people, but those were the ones she loved best. She could always read, and her books were chosen with discrimination. She kept all her old interest in parish affairs, and the time came when she could realize that had she been able to take an active part in them, there would have been many frictions between her and her husband. In her passive attitude of onlooker she never interfered. As the children grew older they were her most intense interest. She was determined that they should never suffer from her sufferings. Edith spent several winters in Boston with a cousin of her mother’s, went to school with girls whose names brought back memories of her own schooldays to the invalid, went to concerts, enjoyed herself healthily and heartily, and came home more affectionate, more interested in her family, than before. Chris had been sent to a good school, had gone in for athletics to a certain extent, had been popular, and on this Kaster Eve was drawing toward the end of his last year at Harvard. As Anne Waring often said to herself and to those about her, there had been many compensations in her life.

Both Edith and Chris had kissed their mother good-night when their father came into the room, for the last half hour of the invalid’s day was always spent by husband and wife together. Even to Chris there was something sacred in those moments. |

Chapter II

Aunt Louisa was seated before the library fire with her dear Polly purring in her lap when the brother and sister entered the room.

“Oh, Edith, would you mind taking the ‘ Transcript’ out to the kitchen? I meant to go as soon as I had finished it, but Polly seemed so comfortable that I hated to disturb him. He’s sneezed twice since I found him under the evergreens by the gate, and I’m dreadfully afraid he caught cold.”

Polly winked one eye; he was a cat of many colors, as his real name, Polychrome, suggested, well grown, and of engaging habits; but it must be confessed that he was a tyrant over his womenfolk.

‘¢ Perhaps the cook would be kind enough to wait until I have looked at the paper. Or is it her habit to give warning if she is not promptly fed with literature?” asked Chris. His words might have been meant as a joke, but there was something in his tone which suggested bad temper.

“Why, my dear boy, keep it as long as you want to,” replied Aunt Louisa heartily. ‘I forgot you did n’t see it before dinner, you came home so late.”

Chris said “ Thank you” in a tone anything but grateful, unfolded the paper, and sat down by the lamp to read. Edith drew up a chair close to her . aunt’s side, and tenderly stroked Polly as she began to talk in that half whisper so irritating to a reader. :

“ Did n’t papa look handsome this evening? I wish mamma could have seen him. She always says she fell in love with him the very first time she saw him, and that was in church.”

«‘ Yes, dear, he did; I never see him in his surplice without thinking of Saint John. And I’m not the only one to say so; Mrs. Mansfield was here this morning when you were out, and she said half the congregation saw the look and often mentioned it.”

“ Did she say anything about Jim?” asked Edith. |

“ Jim Mansfield? What about him?” asked Chris, looking up with some interest, for Jim was a promising football player in the junior class, and had lately distinguished himself by a broken leg.

‘‘ His mother says he’s getting on splendidly, and may be able to go out in another week.”

«¢ Does she think he ’ll be fit to play in the autumn ?” continued Chris.

«Play? Oh, at the ball games? She never said a word about that. But she said there never was such a lovely invalid in this world. Just think, Chris, when the bone was knitting, that boy learned to crochet, and has almost finished her a large afghan in crimson and black stripes. Isn't that touching ? ”

“ By George!” exclaimed Chris, with some vehemence, “ if a man wants to show up as a mushmolly, all he’s got to do is to have his female relations talk about him. I believe if Nero’s aunt and Napoleon’s mother could have put their heads together, you ’d have heard one say, ‘ Oh, yes, dear Nero gets such relief from his fiddle; I wish you could hear him play “ Home, Sweet Home”’ on it; it ’s enough to bring the tears to your eyes.’ And the other would reply, ‘It’s just like my little Nappy. When he got back from Egypt, the first thing he asked was what I had for dinner, for no one had made him a rice pudding like mine; and then he ran and picked me the cunningest bunch of violets you ever saw.’ Humph!”

Aunt Louisa looked pained, Edith placidly amused. ‘ You’reas cross as a bear, Kit,” she said calmly, as if stating an evident fact. “ You’d better go to bed and sleep it off. Just notice which way you get out of bed in the morning, please.”

“Thanks for your good advice ; Ill follow it,” retorted Chris, stalking off after tossing the “ Transcript”? on one side, and then slamming the door behind him.

«¢ W hat can the matter be?” asked Aunt Louisa, in a worried tone. ‘I’m afraid he’s working too hard at his lessons. He’ll be so disappointed if he does n’t get good marks ” —

‘¢ Honors, auntie, please.”

“¢ Yes, I meant honors, for your mother’s sake. She never nags him, but she’s set her heart on his doing well.”

“‘ It may be hard work; but I rather believe it’s hard play,” said Edith sagaciously, quite innocent of any double meaning her words might have.

She picked up the paper and took it to the -kitechen, where Miss Waring’s benignant rule caused content to smile on every face; then she returned to the library and waited for her father to come downstairs and read prayers.

Chris, whose room was on the ground floor, heard his father’s step in the hall, the quiet closing of the door, the distant murmur of voices which lasted but a few moments, and then the louder sounds as the family parted for the night. He knew from the grind of metal that Aunt Louisa was turning the key in the front door; then a puff and the hall lamp was blown out; then for a moment silence, to be followed by steps above moving here and there, until at last all was absolutely still. He had not gone to bed; he was sitting by his table, his chin supported in the palms of his hands, his eyes looking stupidly ahead into a dim corner. The crash was coming; he had but one day more. Easter had been granted him, but Monday the truth was to be told.

A distant scream of a locomotive came from the wide meadowland over which the railway ran. It roused him. He rose, stretched himself impatiently, and pulled up his shade. The moon was even brighter than an hour before. The world looked wide and free; the house stifled him. With a sudden impulse he opened his closet, put on his riding-clothes, and stole as gently as a thief to the stable. He knew that the black mare had not been out all day, as Andrew had complained on driving him from the station with the big bay that Miss Edith kept him too busy running to and from the church on festival days to give him time for his horses. Chris knew every corner of the stable, and could have saddled the mare even without the aid of a lantern he lighted. She was all eager responsiveness, glad to feel the touch of his hand, impatient to exchange the dark warmth of her stall for the rush of cool air outside. In a few moments Chris had led her a little way down the road, beyond the corner where their short driveway swept in a curve beside the group of evergreens, and then mounted. He would forget everything for a time; he would let the motion, the beauty about him, the sense of freedom, chase away his memories until he was so tired that he: could sleep.

But it was useless to try. He saw nothing of the magic night. There was but one sight in his eyes, — his college room ; four of his friends seated round a table while he dealt ; a row of empty champagne bottles on the sideboard; the fans of gaslight looking yellow and fagged out as a ray of sunlight pushed its imperative way through the curtains ; abandoned packs of cards strewn over the floor; the big pile of chips before him; the thin, old, jaded look in his companions’ young faces, their crumpled hair and loosened cravats ; the stale, sickening atmosphere that had made him say, “Faugh! this is enough to make a fellow sick,” and the tumult of birds’ voices that had rushed in through the window when he had thrown it open. ‘Then the sudden warning that came only in time for the other men to huddle as noiselessly as might be into Chris’s bedroom, leaving him alone to face the coming storm. The proctor’s visit had been very brief; he had said little. «‘ This is not the first time, Waring; I suppose you know what my duty is?” “Yes, sir.” “ And you can imagine, too, what the penalty will be, as you have insolently disregarded former warnings ?”’ “Yes, sir.’ ‘¢Good-morning, then.” ‘“ Good-morning, sir.” That was all for the moment; but the faculty meeting followed, and Chris heard that he was expelled. All the professors had been considerate. The only thing said about his companions was, “ Of course you were not playing alone, Mr. Waring?” “Naturally not,’ Chris had answered dryly. Then there had been a pause, after which the professor had jotted down something in a little book. Chris, who supposed he was going to be tormented to give the names of the other men, felt the first softening about his throat. “Thank you, sir; you’re awfully good,” he said impulsively, and the professor had understood after his first rather wondering look, and had hard work not to pat the boy’s shoulder, he was so evidently broken. One favor he had asked, one only, and it was granted: that the letter telling of his disgrace might not reach his father until Easter Monday. Chris had not tried to give any reasons for this request; but he had always been a favorite in spite of his wildness, and his punishment was so heavy that his judges were glad to soften it in any way they could. So he was free for — how many hours? Thirty-six. It might kill his mother. He wondered vaguely if he and his father could manage to keep it from her always; if they could spare her the crushing blow. No, any other man would help; but his father would think a lie a sin. ‘ He’d rather keep his own soul white than spare her. God! I’d go to the stake for the worst erime known, so that I was afraid of what was coming as well as of the fire, if I could keep her from it.” He groaned aloud, and the mare, who was breathing a little heavily after a steady canter of twenty minutes, fell into a Bi and dropped her head.