Part 46 (1/2)

The omelette was finished, and the Doctor and Jim Connolly had come in.

”The stars are out,” the Doctor said. ”After supper we'll walk a bit.”

Jean was never to forget that walk with her father. It was her last long walk with him before he went to France, her last intimate talk.

It was very cold, and he took her arm, the snow crunched under their feet.

Faintly the chimes of the old College came up to them. ”Nine o'clock,”

said the Doctor. ”Think of all the years I've heard the chimes, I have lived over half a century--and my father before me heard them--and they rang in my grandfather's time. Perhaps they will ring in the ears of my grandchildren, Jean.”

They had stopped to listen, but now they went on. ”Do you know what they used to say to me when I was a little boy?

'The Lord watch Between thee and--me--'”

”My mother and I used to repeat it together at nine o'clock, and when I brought your mother here for our honeymoon--that first night we, too, stood and listened to the chimes--and I told her what they said.

”Men drift away from these things,” he continued, with something of an effort. ”I have drifted too far. But, Jean, will you always remember this, that when I am at my best, I come back to the things my mother taught her boy? If anything should happen, you will remember?”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”If anything should happen, you will remember?”]

She clung to his arm. She had no words. Never again was she to hear the chimes without that poignant memory of her father begging her to remember the best--.

”I have been thinking,” he said, out of a long silence, ”of you and Derry. I--I want you to marry him, dear, before I go.”

”Before you go--Daddy--”

”Yes. Emily says I have no right to stand in the way of your happiness. And I have no right. And some day, perhaps, oh, my little Jean, my grandchildren may hear the chimes--”

White and still, she stood with her face upturned to the stars. ”Life is so wonderful, Daddy.”

And this time she said it out of a woman's knowledge of what life was to mean.

They went in, to find that the Connollys had retired. Jean slept in a great feather-bed. And all the night the chimes in the College tower struck the hours--

In the morning, Jean went over to the church with Mrs. Connolly. It was Sat.u.r.day, and things must be made ready for the services the next day. Jean had been taught as a child to kneel reverently while Mrs.

Connolly prayed. To sit quietly in a pew while her good friend did the little offices of the altar.

Jean had always loved to sit there, to wonder about the rows of candles and the crucifix, to wonder about the Sacred Heart, and St. Agnes with the lamb, and St. Anthony who found things when you lost them, and St.

Francis in the brown frock with the rope about his waist, and why Mrs.

Connolly never touched any of the sacred vessels with bare hands.

But most of all she had wondered about that benignant figure in the pale blue garments who stood in a niche, with a light burning at her feet, and with a baby in her arms.

_Mary_--

Faintly as she gazed upon it on this winter morning, Jean began to perceive the meaning of that figure. Of late many women had said to her, ”Was my son born for this, to be torn from my arms--to be butchered?”

Well, Mary's son had been torn from her arms--butchered--her little son who had lain in a manger and whom she had loved as much as any less-wors.h.i.+pped mother,--and he had told the world what he thought of sin and injustice and cruelty, and the world had hated him because he had set himself against these things--and they had killed him, and from his death had come the regeneration of mankind.

And now, other men, following him, were setting themselves against injustice and cruelty, and they were being killed for it. But perhaps their sacrifices, too, would be for the salvation of the world. Oh, if only it might be for the world's salvation!