His face was pale and drawn, his grey eyes half distraught, his slender, nervous hands clinched as if to hold fast to some strand of hope, some last remnant of courage, some crumb of consolation for that moment when his soul, utterly bereft, should cry aloud in desolation.
Sidney Martin preached to his people sweet and wholesome sermons, instinct with the hopefulness and charity of one who believes that, “all things work together for good,” and that “the mute beyond is just,” but in his own soul was chaos.
Always sensible of his personal responsibility towards his fellows, he had now become almost morbid upon the subject.
The old workman had known Sidney better than Sidney had known himself, and his prophecies were being fulfilled.
Happy as Sidney was in his husbandhood, yet the possession of Vashti was not a narcotic strong enough to stupefy his keen spiritual nature.
Every Sunday before he entered the pulpit he endured a Gethsemane; every time he quitted it he sought the faces of his people yearningly, pitiably, eager to be assured that his words had comforted them.
He spent all his time thinking of and for them, and he had won closer to their hearts than he guessed. They gave him confidences which had been withheld from their fellows for years, and thus let in to the closed chambers in their humble lives, he was able to justify himself to Vashti for the very lenient way in which he looked upon their lapses. He sometimes wondered that their common experiences of poverty and effort did not make them more considerate in their judgments upon each other. But they found in him always a merciful judge. He visited their homes, he knew their hopes and fears, he appreciated the pathos of their narrow ambitions, at which a less great-hearted man might have laughed.
He went into the little school-house frequently, and strove in simple words to awaken the children to the beauty about them, to the possibilities of life. He had great hopes of the children. Already he had singled out several whom he thought might make scholars. He promised himself that they should be given the opportunity.
He had been going to the school that morning when a little incident occurred which awakened all his most poignant doubts of himself, and the righteousness of his ministry.