Part 4 (1/2)

At length a step was heard. Ephraim came in bearing Susannah's rain cloak and goloshes. He was wet, pale, and breathless, but he would not betray his weakness and excitement by a word.

”You were looking for me, Ephraim, and some one told you that I had come home. Did you hear who brought me? O Ephraim! I have been out walking with the false prophet, and then with one of his disciples.” Susannah, sitting by the fire, looked at him trying to smile through his gloom.

She began again, then stopped; how to impart the full flavour of that which had befallen her she did not know. It seemed to her that the difficulty lay in Ephraim's silence. She was not aware that she had not even a distinct thought for a certain interest in her late companion which she most wanted to put into words. ”Ephraim, it's all very well for you to stand there drying your feet, but--but--they were just like other people, as you told Mr. Finney, you know.”

”Did you expect them to have horns and tails?”

”I don't think they are very wicked,” said Susannah. She looked down as she said it, speaking with a certain undefined tenderness of tone begotten of a new experience.

”Well?”

”That's all.”

”How could you know whether they are wicked or not?” he burst out angrily. ”Do you suppose that they would show _you_ the iniquity of their hearts?”

”Why, Ephraim, you've always stood up for them before!”

He gave a sort of snort. ”I never stood up for them by making eyes at my hands and cooing out my words.”

She looked up in entire bewilderment.

”It doesn't matter what I mean,” he added. ”What did they say? What did they do? Tell me. If I'd known these fellows had come back, do you suppose I'd have let you go?”

”You are so strange,” she said. ”They did nothing but just bring me home and hold the umbrella, and Joseph Smith said he knew he'd been a bad man and didn't know anything. I thought you'd be interested to hear about them, Ephraim.”

”I should have thought you'd had too much self-respect to allow him to talk to you like that. Of course he was trying to work on your feelings.”

”No, he wasn't, Ephraim. You are quite as unjust as my aunt to-day. He wasn't trying to work on my feelings. He was just--well, he was sorry that my frock got so wet, and he just happened to say the other thing. I am sure--”

Her conviction concerning the naturalness of Smith's conduct and the Quaker's sincerity had arisen in the presence of each, and was not now to be ascribed to any particular word or action which she could remember and repeat.

”Oh, he was sorry your frock was splashed, was he? And the other fellow they call Halsey, was he concerned about that too?”

”Who told you that his name was Halsey?” The interest of her tone was unmistakable.

”That is his name, and he must be a degraded fellow to take up with Smith.”

She saw that Ephraim's clothes were very wet; he must have walked far.

She attributed his exhausted look entirely to fatigue, and his ill-temper to the same cause. ”Mr. Halsey seemed quite good and in earnest, like the people that come to see Mr. Finney when he stays here, asking about saving their souls, as if their souls were something quite different from the other part of them; and, Ephraim, I have often wanted to ask you, but I didn't like to. You don't believe what aunt and uncle do, do you? Aunt talks as if you didn't believe. Do you think”--her voice trembled--”do you think that I ought to think about my soul--that way?”

Ephraim never perceived the nature of her difficulty. He thought she questioned the earnestness of life. He leaned back against the jamb of the chimney, vainly trying to dispel his anger and bring his mind under the command of reason. He looked at Susannah steadily; she was somewhat pale with weariness and excitement; she could never be other than beautiful. How perfect was the moulding of the strong firm chin, of the curving nostrils! The breadth of the cheek bone, the height and breadth of the brow, beautiful as they were in their pink and white tinting, conveyed to him almost more strongly the sense of mental completeness than of outward beauty. He did not dare to look at her questioning eyes; his glance travelled over the amber ringlets, damp and tossed just now, drooping as if to say ”Susannah is lonely and perplexed, and she needs your help.” Ephraim, proud, and mortified to think how ill he compared with her, laughed fiercely within himself. This was a young woman of distinction, and just now she knew it so little that she sat looking up with respect at his ill-conditioned self. How long would that last? How long would she remember any word that he chanced to say to her?

”Susannah, I think you are very ignorant. Were you never taught anything when you were a little girl?”

”My father and his friends were always polite to me.” She spoke with grave, rather than offended, dignity.

”She is entirely sweet,” he said to himself; ”she will never answer me in anger.” Then he went on aloud, ”And I am not polite; I am ill-trained and ill-bred. Well, listen, Susannah. Whatever my mother may or may not tell you about my peculiar opinions, whatever _I_ choose to believe or to do, remember this, that I tell you that _you have_ a soul to be eternally lost or saved, and it behoves you to walk carefully and concern yourself about your salvation.” There was a vibration of intense warning in his voice. He was thinking of the life that might be so n.o.ble if will and reason sided with G.o.d, and of the snares that the world lays for beauty, and the light way in which beauty might walk into them; and, as with all dreamy minds, he was too absorbed in his thought to know how little it shone through the veil in which he wrapped it.