Only once in the long winter did he come near to breaking his promise. One evening, when March was melting into April, and the pulses of spring were stirring under the lingering snow, he was walking home from school alone. As he descended into the little hollow below the manse a lively lilt of music drifted up to meet him. It was only the product of a mouth-organ, manipulated by a little black-eyed, French-Canadian hired boy, sitting on the fence by the brook; but there was music in the ragged urchin and it came out through his simple toy. It tingled over Felix from head to foot; and, when Leon held out the mouth-organ with a fraternal grin of invitation, he snatched at it as a famished creature might snatch at food.
Then, with it halfway to his lips, he paused. True, it was only the violin he had promised never to touch; but he felt that if he gave way ever so little to the desire that was in him, it would sweep everything before it. If he played on Leon Buote’s mouth-organ, there in that misty spring dale, he would go to old Abel’s that evening; he KNEW he would go. To Leon’s amazement, Felix threw the mouth-organ back at him and ran up the hill as if he were pursued. There was something in his boyish face that frightened Leon; and it frightened Janet Andrews as Felix rushed past her in the hall of the manse.
“Child, what’s the matter with you?” she cried. “Are you sick? Have you been scared?”
“No, no. Leave me alone, Janet,” said Felix chokingly, dashing up the stairs to his own room.
He was quite composed when he came down to tea, an hour later, though he was unusually pale and had purple shadows under his large eyes.
Mr. Leonard scrutinized him somewhat anxiously; it suddenly occurred to the old minister that Felix was looking more delicate than his wont this spring. Well, he had studied hard all winter, and he was certainly growing very fast. When vacation came he must be sent away for a visit.
“They tell me Naomi Clark is real sick,” said Janet. “She has been ailing all winter, and now she’s fast to her bed. Mrs. Murphy says she believes the woman is dying, but nobody dares tell her so. She won’t give in she’s sick, nor take medicine. And there’s nobody to wait on her except that simple creature, Maggie Peterson.”
“I wonder if I ought to go and see her,” said Mr. Leonard uneasily.
“What use would it be to bother yourself? You know she wouldn’t see you — she’d shut the door in your face like she did before. She’s an awful wicked woman — but it’s kind of terrible to think of her lying there sick, with no responsible person to tend her.”
“Naomi Clark is a bad woman and she lived a life of shame, but I like her, for all that,” remarked Felix, in the grave, meditative tone in which he occasionally said rather startling things.
Mr. Leonard looked somewhat reproachfully at Janet Andrews, as if to ask her why Felix should have attained to this dubious knowledge of good and evil under her care; and Janet shot a dour look back which, being interpreted, meant that if Felix went to the district school she could not and would not be held responsible if he learned more there than arithmetic and Latin.
“What do you know of Naomi Clark to like or dislike?” she asked curiously. “Did you ever see her?”
“Oh, yes,” Felix replied, addressing himself to his cherry preserve with considerable gusto. “I was down at Spruce Cove one night last summer when a big thunderstorm came up. I went to Naomi’s house for shelter. The door was open, so I walked right in, because nobody answered my knock. Naomi Clark was at the window, watching the cloud coming up over the sea. She just looked at me once, but didn’t say anything, and then went on watching the cloud. I didn’t like to sit down because she hadn’t asked me to, so I went to the window by her and watched it, too. It was a dreadful sight — the cloud was so black and the water so green, and there was such a strange light between the cloud and the water; yet there was something splendid in it, too. Part of the time I watched the storm, and the other part I watched Naomi’s face. It was dreadful to see, like the storm, and yet I liked to see it.
“After the thunder was over it rained a while longer, and Naomi sat down and talked to me. She asked me who I was, and when I told her she asked me to play something for her on her violin,” — Felix shot a deprecating glance at Mr. Leonard—”because, she said, she’d heard I was a great hand at it. She wanted something lively, and I tried just as hard as I could to play something like that. But I couldn’t. I played something that was terrible — it just played itself — it seemed as if something was lost that could never be found again. And before I got through, Naomi came at me, and tore the violin from me, and — SWORE. And she said, ‘You big-eyed brat, how did you know THAT?’ Then she took me by the arm — and she hurt me, too, I can tell you — and she put me right out in the rain and slammed the door.”
“The rude, unmannerly creature!” said Janet indignantly.
“Oh, no, she was quite in the right,” said Felix composedly. “It served me right for what I played. You see, she didn’t know I couldn’t help playing it. I suppose she thought I did it on purpose.”
“What on earth did you play, child?”
“I don’t know.” Felix shivered. “It was awful — it was dreadful. It was fit to break you heart. But it HAD to be played, if I played anything at all.”
“I don’t understand what you mean — I declare I don’t,” said Janet in bewilderment.
“I think we’ll change the subject of conversation,” said Mr. Leonard.
It was a month later when “the simple creature, Maggie” appeared at the manse door one evening and asked for the preached.
“Naomi wants ter see yer,” she mumbled. “Naomi sent Maggie ter tell yer ter come at onct.”
“I shall go, certainly,” said Mr. Leonard gently. “Is she very ill?”
“Her’s dying,” said Maggie with a broad grin. “And her’s awful skeered of hell. Her just knew ter-day her was dying. Maggie told her — her wouldn’t believe the harbour women, but her believed Maggie. Her yelled awful.”
Maggie chuckled to herself over the gruesome remembrance. Mr. Leonard, his heart filled with pity, called Janet and told her to give the poor creature some refreshment. But Maggie shook her head.
“No, no, preacher, Maggie must get right back to Naomi. Maggie’ll tell her the preacher’s coming ter save her from hell.”
She uttered an eerie cry, and ran at full speed shoreward through the spruce woods.
“The Lord save us!” said Janet in an awed tone. “I knew the poor girl was simple, but I didn’t know she was like THAT. And are you going, sir?”
“Yes, of course. I pray God I may be able to help the poor soul,” said Mr. Leonard sincerely. He was a man who never shirked what he believed to be his duty; but duty had sometimes presented itself to him in pleasanter guise than this summons to Naomi Clark’s deathbed.
The woman had been the plague spot of Lower Carmody and Carmody Harbour for a generation. In the earlier days of his ministry to the congregation he had tried to reclaim her, and Naomi had mocked and flouted him to his face. Then, for the sake of those to whom she was a snare or a heartbreak, he had endeavoured to set the law in motion against her, and Naomi had laughed the law to scorn. Finally, he had been compelled to let her alone.
Yet Naomi had not always been an outcast. Her girlhood