The Girl Who Had No God/Part 7

"I wonder," Ward reflected, "whether a matter of tradition, and custom will prevent women from singing in the heavenly choir.

Mrs. Bryant stabbed at her fish. But she had not finished. There were many things about Saint Jude's that did not please her. The burial of old Hilary Kingston had been one. She seized on that.

"A non-communicant," she snapped. "An infidel, an atheist! The daughter is living alone up there at this minute. It isn't respectable. It's a bad example to the girls in the village. The house is full of men all the time."

"That must be a mistake."

"It is quite true. Servants talk, you know. What can you expect? Raised out of the church, with no belief, and, of course, no moral instruction."

Ward bent forward over the table.

"That is a very serious statement, Mrs. Bryant." His eyes were like steel. "Of course you are not basing it mere!y on what you hear from servants?"

Mrs. Bryant flushed, a purplish spot in the center of each sagging cheek.

"I do not gossip with the servants," she said, shortly. "It is common talk. Machines come and go from the house at queer hours of the night. The girl spends a great deal of money. Where does she get it? Where, for that matter, did old Hilary Kingston get it?"

Thus challenged, Ward had nothing to say.

After dinner he left early, but he did not go home. He went up the hill. As he strode on, he remembered many things. The girl was without the sheet-anchor of any belief, adrift and alone, and he had made no attempt to help her unbelief. Although it was after ten, the house was still lighted downstairs, and he went without hesitation into the garden.

Thus it happened that he saw Elinor in Huff's arms, saw him thrust her violently from him, and rush away across the flower-beds, leaving her there alone.

Ward remained in the shadows. To save his life he could not have spoken to Elinor then. Under his constrained exterior he was in the thrall of the fiercest jealousy. This little fair-haired girl, to whom his God was no God, had taken a powerful hold on him.

Elinor, who slept little that night, saw the light in his window until it faded into the dawn.

Elinor went to the early communion the following day. The church was dark. There were hardly two dozen people scattered over the building. She sat far back and was heavily veiled. When the congregation knelt, she knelt. An old woman in the next pew gave her the prayer book open at the service. On her knees then went Elinor and listened to Ward's fine voice echoing through the empty building.

The morning was warm and the windows open. The odor of burned wood from parish house crept in.

"Thou shalt not steal," Ward read from the Decalogue, and the people said:

"Lord have mercy on us and incline out hearts to keep this law."

"Thou shalt not steal."

In the palm of her left glove Elinor had the Bryant pear-shaped pearl.

Ward had not seen her. He went through the service reverently, with an impressiveness of voice and bearing that showed how real it was to him. And in his voice, reading, exhorting, commanding, there were tender notes that caught Elinor's breath in her throat.

When the service was over, she rose from her knees and dropped the Bryant pearl into the alms-box by the by the door. The congregation, small and scattered, was still kneeling. The doorway and the alms-box were in twilight.

Drawing down her veil, she went quickly out into the sunshine.

At the eleven o'clock service Ward announced the burning of the parish building.

"It is not my intention to make an appeal," he said simply. "The parish house was built to fill a great need; that need still exists. If our church is to be an element in the daily lives of the people of this town, we must have a meeting place for them. For the worship of our God, the church building is sufficient, but if religion is to you the thing it is to me, the broader religion of universal brotherhood, the church building is not enough.

"Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself."

Seventy-eight thousand dollars was taken up in the collection at Saint Jude's that morning. Over fifty thousand was in checks, the rest was in cash.

Walter Huff, sitting alone in the back of the church, had watched Ward intently through the services.

Unlike Elinor, Huff had been raised in a Presbyterian household. He had come to jeer, to watch with his thief's eyes the offertory piling into the silver plates. But the service told on him. Somewhere down in his violent young heart there crept a sense of shame. It was only when he looked at Ward that his eyes hardened.

This man who bad come between him and his girl—this white-handed, surpliced, prayer-reading priest, who in a dozen words could compel the people before him to lay a fortune at his feet—Huff ground his teeth together. But something of unwilling admiration was mixed up with his scorn. This was no mean adversary, this Ward; a man, every inch of him. He would beat him out if he had to kill him to do it.

Huff stayed in church after the service. He accosted Mr. Bryant, one of the vestrymen, as the congregation filed out.

"I don't like to ask yon to talk business on Sunday," he said, "but I think it's going to be mighty inconvenient until you get the new building."

"Horrible," said the vestryman. "No fire is ever convenient, but this—"

Huff drew a business card from his pocket.

"I thought perhaps you might be willing to talk about s temporary building," he said. "We specialize in things like that. Wood, you know, and weather-proof, but inexpensive."

The last word caught Mr. Bryant's ear.

"Seems to me," Huff went on. "the choir boys need a place to dress in. You couldn't ask them to put on their surplices at home and walk over here."

"We had thought of a tent," Mr. Bryant said uncertainly, "But if you care to look around—"

"Never mind about me," said Huff largely. "I'll just glance over the place myself. You'd better attend to that fortune you took up in tho collection this morning."

"The assistant rector had taken charge of that," Mr. Bryant observed, and after that for half an hour he and Huff talked board floors, tar-paper roofs and electric installation in the temporary headquarters.

Huff made careful notes in his pocket notebook. They included the length and breadth of a temporary building, the residence of the assistant rector, a stove in the temporary structure for cold days, the amount of collection, and the time at which evening service was over on Sunday night.

Talbot, running out to tho country club that afternoon for his Sunday game of golf, stopped off at the hall.

He found Elinor lunching alone in the arbor, which commanded a view of the valley.

"I brought out a letter from Boroday," he said, producing it. "He wrote it yesterday morning, but I did not stop at the Dago's until an hour or so ago."

The Dago was the owner of a gambling house far downtown—a sort of underworld clearing house. Its safety for Talbot and the others lay in the fact that it drew its clientele from the upper as well as lower walks of life. Huff, acting in his taxicab capacity as steerer, was able to come and go without suspicion.

Talbot could not read old Hilary's cryptic shorthand. Only three had known it: Boroday, old Hilary himself, and Elinor.

Elinor ran through it while Talbot ate a sandwich. She was rattier white when she looked up.

"It's about the Bryant pearl," she interpreted. "Boroday says that if the chief gets it back he will let him go. The thief's reputation is hanging on it. The Bryants are influential."

She read the last paragraph aloud to him:

"On your lives, boys, do what I tell you. Mail the pearl in a plain box to police headquarters. Mall it downtown in the city. If everything Is all right, I'll be able to get out to Woffingham in a week, perhaps less. This will make the church plan unnecessary and relieve Elinor's mind. I see you got the parish house. it was foolhardy and useless."

Talbot rose and stretched himself.

"Wonderful day for golf," he said. "Now let's have the pearl and I am off."

Elinor's eyes were pitiful. . "Wouldn't any other pearl do?"

He glanced down at her quizzically.

"Where's your mind, Elinor? If you lose a dog and want it back, will any other dog do? Why? Do you want the thing yourself?" "I have given it away," said Elinor.

Under his golf tan Talbot turned rather gray.

"To whom?"

"The jewels were always mine," protested Elinor, defending herself. "You have always told me that. I thought I had a right—"

"To whom?"

"I put it in the alms-box at Saint Jude's this morning."

"Then it may will be there?"

"I don't know."

"In the name of God!" Talbot broke out. "What possessed you to give the thing away? Whim or no whim, you have no right to risk the rest of us. If that thing is traced back to you, you know what it means."

"Nobody saw me—"

But Talbot was pacing up and down.

"There's only one chance," he said. "I'll send a special delivery to the chief, telling him the thing is in the almsbox. If it's still there, he'll get it and return it. If it's already been discovered, at least he can claim to have known its hiding-place."

Talbot disgustedly relinquished his golf, and in the library of the hall wrote the anonymous letter to the chief. Then. in his gray car, he set off for the city to mail the letter.

When he was in the car, the engine throbbing easily, Elinor ventured to put her hand on his arm.

"Last night, she said rapidly, "Walter threatened all sorts of things; that he would get the morning collection at Saint Jude's, that he would kill Mr. Ward. I'm frightened, Tallie."

Talbot patted her hand.

"We will get this fixed up so it won't be necessary; and as for the other, you know Walter. He was mad with jealousy last night. That's all talk."

On that wild ride Talbot had little time to think, but such as they were, his thoughts were of Elinor and her caprice.

"It's the preacher, after all," he said to himself. "It's enough to make old Hilary turn over."

From that hie mind wandered to Walter. He knew Huff, the violence of his temper, the madness of his passion. Talbot was uneasy.

Elinor had an unexpected visitor that afternoon. It was the Bryant woman.

White, but very dignified, Elinor came into the drawing room. But Mrs. Bryant had not come about the pearl.

"You must forgive a Sunday visit," she said. "But I have taken Mr. Bryant to the country club, and I wanted so much to come and see you."

Elinor's color returned.

"It is very kind of you to come."

Mrs. Bryant's small, birdlike eyes darted over the room. The house was distinctly good form. Perhaps the girl might be an acquisition to the social life of the village. After all, religion was becoming very broad. Even the best people—

"The country club," said Mrs. Bryant aloud, "is full of disagreeable memories to me just now. It was less than a week ago that I was robbed."

"Ah!" said Elinor. "Robbed! How interesting!"

"All my jewels, everything I possessed that was really worth while."

"But surely the police—"

Mrs. Bryant flushed with anger. "The police!" she said. "It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that the police are in with the thieves. Look at the condition of this country. It has been terror-ridden for the last two or three years. You yourself are a victim. Your poor father!"

Actually she had detested old Hilary. She sat forward on the edge of her chair and spoke with great unction.

"There is a band of organized, intelligent bandits working in this neighborhood, Miss Kingston, a band of murderers. In these days of feminism, it wouldn't astonish me at all to discover that some woman is at the head of it. The things that have been planned have been so fiendishly clever!"

Mrs. Bryant rose. "It shows how demoralizing such things are, she said. "I I assure you that I never look at a woman's throat these days without expecting to see my pearl."

From that dangerous ground she stepped  quickly to the burning of the parish house, which she believed was the work of militant suffragettes.

"The dear rector is not a feminist," she said. "His assistant, I fear, has a strong tendency in that direction. But he is a wonderful person, really. Just imagine, seventy-eight thousand dollars was collected in Saint Jude's church this morning for rebuilding the parish house!"

She turned at the doorway.