The noise of Alice opening the front door came as a pleasant digression. A second later it became clear from the sound of voices that she had brought someone back with her, and Theron hastily stretched himself out again in the armchair, with his head back in the pillow, and his feet on the other chair. He had come mighty near forgetting that he was an invalid, and he protected himself the further now by assuming an air of lassitude verging upon prostration.
“Yes; there’s a light burning. It’s all right,” he heard Alice say. She entered the room, and Theron’s head was too bad to permit him to turn it, and see who her companion was.
“Theron dear,” Alice began, “I knew you’d be glad to see her, even if you were out of sorts; and I persuaded her just to run in for a minute. Let me introduce you to Sister Soulsby. Sister Soulsby—my husband.”
The Rev. Mr. Ware sat upright with an energetic start, and fastened upon the stranger a look which conveyed anything but the satisfaction his wife had been so sure about. It was at the first blush an undisguised scowl, and only some fleeting memory of that reflection about needing now to dissemble, prevented him from still frowning as he rose to his feet, and perfunctorily held out his hand.
“Delighted, I’m sure,” he mumbled. Then, looking up, he discovered that Sister Soulsby knew he was not delighted, and that she seemed not to mind in the least.
“As your good lady said, I just ran in for a moment,” she remarked, shaking his limp hand with a brisk, businesslike grasp, and dropping it. “I hate bothering sick people, but as we’re to be thrown together a good deal this next week or so, I thought I’d like to lose no time in saying ‘howdy.’ I won’t keep you up now. Your wife has been sweet enough to ask me to move my trunk over here in the morning, so that you’ll see enough of me and to spare.”
Theron looked falteringly into her face, as he strove for words which should sufficiently mask the disgust this intelligence stirred within him. A debt-raiser in the town was bad enough! A debt-raiser quartered in the very parsonage!—he ground his teeth to think of it.
Alice read his hesitation aright. “Sister Soulsby went to the hotel,” she hastily put in; “and Loren Pierce was after her to come and stay at his house, and I ventured to tell her that I thought we could make her more comfortable here.” She accompanied this by so daring a grimace and nod that her husband woke up to the fact that a point in Conference politics was involved.
He squeezed a doubtful smile upon his features. “We shall both do our best,” he said. It was not easy, but he forced increasing amiability into his glance and tone. “Is Brother Soulsby here, too?” he asked.
The debt-raiser shook her head—again the prompt, decisive movement, so like a busy man of affairs. “No,” she answered. “He’s doing supply down on the Hudson this week, but he’ll be here in time for the Sunday morning love-feast. I always like to come on ahead, and see how the land lies. Well, good night! Your head will be all right in the morning.”
Precisely what she meant by this assurance, Theron did not attempt to guess. He received her adieu, noted the masterful manner in which she kissed his wife, and watched her pass out into the hall, with the feeling uppermost that this was a person who decidedly knew her way about. Much as he was prepared to dislike her, and much as he detested the vulgar methods her profession typified, he could not deny that she seemed a very capable sort of woman.
This mental concession did not prevent his fixing upon Alice, when she returned to the room, a glance of obvious disapproval.
“Theron,” she broke forth, to anticipate his reproach, “I did it for the best. The Pierces would have got her if I hadn’t cut in. I thought it would help to have her on our side. And, besides, I like her. She’s the first sister I’ve seen since we’ve been in this hole that’s had a kind word for me—or—or sympathized with me! And—and—if you’re going to be offended—I shall cry!”
There were real tears on her lashes, ready to make good the threat. “Oh, I guess I wouldn’t,” said Theron, with an approach to his old, half-playful manner. “If you like her, that’s the chief thing.”
Alice shook her teardrops away. “No,” she replied, with a wistful smile; “the chief thing is to have her like you. She’s as smart as a steel trap—that woman is—and if she took the notion, I believe she could help get us a better place.”
XIV
The ensuing week went by with a buzz and whirl, circling about Theron Ware’s dizzy consciousness like some huge, impalpable teetotum sent spinning under Sister Soulsby’s resolute hands. Whenever his vagrant memory recurred to it, in after months, he began by marvelling, and ended with a shudder of repulsion.
It was a week crowded with events, which seemed to him to shoot past so swiftly that in effect they came all of a heap. He never essayed the task, in retrospect, of arranging them in their order of sequence. They had, however, a definite and interdependent chronology which it is worth the while to trace.
Mrs. Soulsby brought her trunk round to the parsonage bright and early on Friday morning, and took up her lodgement in the best bedroom, and her headquarters in the house at large, with a cheerful and
