The Girl Who Had No God/Part 5

"An audacious piece of work. Half the women in this vicinity suffered. Most of them are my parishioners."

"Ah!" breathed Elinor, "I am sorry."

Ward shrugged his shoulders ruefully. "It means, I dare say, that the poor of the parish will get less than ever this year. Mrs Bryant, for instance, who has always been generous, lost a pearl necklace and a wonderful pear-shaped pink pearl."

"Is »he—a wealthy woman?"

"Very, I believe."

"Then is it such a terrible thing for her to lose the pearl? Perhaps these bandits, as you call them, think they could use these things better than the people who owned them."

Ward smiled. "I daresay we all think we could use the other fellow's possessions better than he does."

Elinor persisted, frowning a little.

"Things are so terribly mixed up," she said. "If you could know the things that I know"—Word looked faintly amused—"the people who are fighting for a principle, and have nothing to fight with, fighting for life sometimes! A good half of the world, you know, just struggles along, and the other half is so smug, so satisfied; it's—it's horrible."

Mr. Ward stared at her.

"How in the world do you come by such thoughts?" he demanded.

"I've never known anything else; I was brought up on the injustice of things. You have your poor here in the parish, but you see I was brought up with the poor of all the world. I am afraid I'm always for the under dog."

Rather startled was Rev. Mr. Ward that summer afternoon on the terrace at the Hall, startled and puzzled.

"Down in our hearts," he said, "perhaps we are all of us for the under dog. But how does that excuse my bandits?"

"This Mrs. Bryant—how much do you suppose you are going to lose for your poor by her loss?"

"Not so much, but enough. She had promised a lot of things. She called up this morning to say that it was all off." He started to say that all bets were off, but decided that it was unclerlcal and changed it. "But I didn't come here to worry you about myself or the parish. I think you should not be here alone."

Elinor looked down over the village.

Theft perhaps, after all, it would be better if I married at once."

"Ah! You are to be married?"

"Now that my father is gone," said Elinor wistfully. "It seems the best thing. And—I should like children. I have no friends, except perhaps you."

Ward strove to keep his voice steady, and matter-of-fact.

"Marriage is no serious—so vital a thing." He was trying to be calm and judicial. But his voice sounded far off; his heart pounded in his ears. "To marry because one is alone, or needs friends—is a flimsy foundation to build on."

Once again Elinor surprised him.

"There have been few really great passions in the world," she said. "I could almost count them on my fingers. The rest of us seem to get along without."

"Perhaps there are more than we hear about. Every now and then, in my work I come across something so much greater than I expected, self-sacrifice, love, charity, faith in mankind."

"Your faith!" Elinor said softly. "That is what I envy you—your faith. Not only your faith in your kind, but—the other sort"

Faith, hope and charity—and the greatest of these is faith. Alas for old Hilary, who had not kept his!

"I had a governess once who had that sort of faith; it was a great comfort to her. But I sit here on my hillside, and it seems to me that spread out at my feet is all the injustice and cruelty and hatred in the world. And your God allows it all. My father tried to believe—tried hard, but he said that when he asked for bread they gave him a stone."

"Do you know who said that?"

"My father." said Elinor.

Rather surprised, he let it go at that.

So great had the urgency of Boroday's position become that the band met at the hall on Thursday of the week after the country-club affair. Lethbridge was to get his instructions; Talbot wished to discuss his prospect.

After dinner, the night being warm, they had their coffee on the terrace.

A summer storm had come up. All at once a flush threatened Saint Jude's.

Huff leaped to his feet.

I've got it!" he said. "What is it they call the big building back of the church?"

None of the men knew. it was, as a matter of fact, the parish house. Lethbridge, however, knew its function.

"Fine prospect that!" he drawled. "That's where the Sunday school is held, and where they keep the plated knives and forks for the church suppers."

"It's a darned fine building," said Huff "What would they do if it burned down?"

They were too unfamiliar with church affairs to hazard a guess. Elinor, who was sitting silent, suddenly voiced an objection to Huff's unspoken plan.

"There must be some other way," she said. "The children—they have sewing classes and entertainments for the children there."

"If lightning struck the parish house tonight—" Huff said quite eagerly. "This is Thursday. By Sunday morning they would be taking up a whacking big collection to rebuild it."

The idea had taken hold of his imagination. Even the suggestion that a large part of the offertory might be in checks mattered not. But Elinor was obdurate.

"You can do it some place else," she said. "Not here. They struggled very much to build the church and they need money now. Mr. Ward told me—"

Huff turned on her jealously.

"Ward—that's the preacher chap?"

"He is the assistant rector," Elinor replied with dignity.

"He's been coming here, then?"

"Twice. Once when father died, and once to warn me against all of you." Not that she hod forgotten that few minutes in the garden, under the moon: but that had been an accident—hardly a call.

Talbot chuckled. But Huff was thinking hard. Elinor had been different lately, a little softer. Ward represented all that the men Elinor know were not—law to their violence, order to their disorder. There was almost a snarl in his voice.

"He'd better stay down in his valley with his old women," he said, "and leave you alone. You don't need him."

"I'm not so sure of that." Elinor replied quietly, and left him staring....

Huff burned the parish house the next night. He did it himself, without the assistance of the band. Into it he put not only the devilish ingenuity of long experience, but his new hatred of Ward.

Church property is always easy of access. It was the work of five minutes to crawl through a basement window and of half an hour to make his preparations.

He looked at his watch when he had finished. It was just midnight. In two hours, or before the fire began, he would be back in the city, establishing his alibi.

The fire-whistle in the village wakened Elinor at something after three o'clock. All of her room was filled with the red glare of the burning parish house. Old Henrietta knocked at her door.

"The church le burning down in the valley," she called. "It's a grand sight."

Elinor was throwing on her clothing.

She must see Ward. She would sell her pearls. She would build a new parish house. She said this over and over to herself as she struggled down the hill.

A new parish house, better than the old, with plenty of room for the children to play in! At least it was night, and the children safe in their beds; thank God for that! She was too disturbed to notice that she had thanked the God in whom she did not believe.

The fire had gained too much headway to be checked. All the efforts of the volunteer department and the small engine were directed toward saving the church. For a time it seemed as if Saint Jude's must go.

Elinor watched the destruction. It seemed as though a hand had fastened itself around her chest. Then she saw Ward. He was on the ridge-pole of the church roof with a hatchet. The ridge-pole was burning slowly. She could see him chopping.

From that time she never took her eyes away from him. Other men were there. She did not see them. She saw only Ward battling on the ridge-pole, and high above on the steeple the sturdy cross of his faith.

Once the men on the street below turned the full force of the hose on him. She saw him reel, saw him recover himself by a miracle.

The fire glare died into the dawn. Saint Jude's was saved. Behind it in its park the charred skeleton of the parish house showed how thoroughly young Huff had done his work. Not until Ward had descended safely to the street did Elinor relax.

Ward found her sitting in one of the chairs along the pavement, her hair still in its long braid, her feet thrust into slippers, her eyes red from long staring.

The fire engine was being dragged away. The crowd had dispersed.

Ward, blackened and depressed, was surveying the ruins with a heavy heart. He turned and saw the girl.

Just at first he was not sure of her. He was always seeing her, mentally. Then he went toward her, his hand out.

"You see," he said, "what an hour may bring forth!" And then, "You reckless child, here in slippers!"

"I saw you on the roof," said Elinor, barely able to articulate. "Once I thought you had fallen."

"They nearly got me. It's rather sad, isn't it?" He stood, bareheaded in the cool dawn, and surveyed the ruin.

People meet great crises simply.

8he tried to find some word of sympathy to say. hat what was there, poor child? She knew the true inwardness of that disastrous night. So, with pathetic eyes, she turned away.

"I'll go home now," she said. "I saw the glare—I—" Quite suddenly her lips trembled. "I should like to help you with the new building."

"Fine!" said Ward heartily. "We'll get to that before long."

"If you had fallen—"

He was not listening. It came to her then how far apart they were. To her his falling would have been an end of all things; to him, it would have meant the beginning of a useful eternity.

"If you wait a little, I'll run around and get my car and take you up."

She sat down again, obediently. She was glad to be with him a little longer.

Until recently, the work of the band had always seemed a vague abstraction. Now one of its results lay before her. And there were other things fresh in her mind—old Hilary, dead of his revolt against law, and lying in state before an altar erected to a God he had not recognized. And Ward, watching her windows and thinking her the embodiment of what a woman should he.

Over her bitterness rose a hot wave of anger against Walter Huff. She had forbidden this thing and he had done it.