The Heart-mender

By Rupert Hughes

Essentially this is a science-fiction love story. The two protagonists, a preacher and a doctor fight endlessly over debates about the soul, the will, responsibility, miracles, sin, punishment, atonement, redemption, and resurrection—and were still friends. But then along came Fanny Protheroe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547054306

Book preview

Rupert Hughes

The Heart-mender

EAN 8596547054306

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

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Titlepage

Text

I

Table of Contents

AND then Fanny Protheroe came back to town to stay. For some time before this event Doctor Merrill had amazed everybody by going to church pretty regularly. He had amazed especially the United Presbyterians, whom he honored with his presence. Landing so hard a customer as a young doctor against the fierce competition for the souls of Carthage, was such a distinct triumph that the young parson had rather plumed himself upon it.

Just as the elders were thinking of inviting the doctor to rent a pew he stopped coming. The first Sunday the preacher murmured in the back of his mind, A professional call, no doubt, realizing that a doctor has no Sabbath.

The next Sunday, another absence. He is growing busier, thought the preacher. The fourth Sunday followed the third into the calendar, and yet no young Doctor Merrill. Young Mr. Findley gave him up for lost. He forgot to hope that some other church had gathered him in.

On the following Monday he met Doctor Merrill at the post-office, where almost all Carthage assembled twice a day.

Why don't you come to church any more? said the preacher.

She threw me over, said the doctor.

The parson realized, with a gulp of ashes, that his pride in his own oratory had been misplaced. The doctor had been attracted by the silent eloquence of the back of some girl's neck, or by her gifts as a listener on the way home. The parson supposed that the girl was Cicely Tansey, whom the doctor had chiefly affected most recently.

The Reverend Wilfred Findley (who hoped some day to be a doctor himself—of divinity) was too young and too deeply involved in three or four conflicting romances of his own to resent Merrill's frankness. He was too honest to pretend a priggish horror. He was plucky enough to smile and insinuate:

Surely there are other nice girls in our congregation.

But Merrill shook his head.

And then Fanny Protheroe came back to town—an entirely other person than the Fanny Protheroe that went away.

She had been the prettiest girl in Carthage when she left. Her return made the merely pretty girls who had usurped her place look like cheap and shallow débutantes in life. For now she had significance. Her beauty was important.

She went along the quiet streets as pallid