Part 20 (1/2)

”I know all that,” Helen began to say gently, but Mrs. Davis could not check the torrent of her despairing grief.

”He didn't have no chance; an' he didn't ask to be born, neither. G.o.d put him here, an' look at the way He made him live; look at this house; see the floor, how the water runs down into that corner: it is all sagged an'

leanin'--the whole thing is rotten look at that one window, up against the wall; not a ray of suns.h.i.+ne ever struck it. An' here's where G.o.d's made us live. Six of us, now the baby's come. Children was the only thing we was rich in, and we didn't have food enough to put in their mouths, or decent clothes to cover 'em. Look at the people 'round us here--livin' in this here row of tenements--drinkin', lying' swearin'. What chance had Tom? G.o.d never give him any, but He could of, if He'd had a mind to. So I can't love Him, Mrs. Ward,--I can't love Him; Him havin' all the power, and yet lettin' Tom's soul go down to h.e.l.l; fer Tom couldn't help it, and him livin' so. I ain't denyin' religion, ner anything like that--I'm a Christian woman, an' a member--but I can't love Him, so there's no use talkin'--I can't love Him.”

She turned away and shook the s.h.i.+rt out, hanging it over the back of a chair in front of the stove, to dry. Helen had followed her, and put her arm across the thin, bent shoulders, her eyes full of tears, though the widow's were hard and bright.

”Oh, Mrs. Davis,” she cried, ”of course you could not love a G.o.d who would never give Tom a chance and then punish him; of course you could not love Him! But he is not punished by being sent to h.e.l.l; indeed, indeed, he is not. If G.o.d is good, He could not be so cruel as to give a soul no chance, and then send it to h.e.l.l. Don't ever think that Tom, brave fellow, is there! Oh, believe what I say to you!”

Mrs. Davis seemed stupefied; she looked up into those beautiful distressed brown eyes, and her dry lips moved.

”You don't think,” she said, in a hoa.r.s.e, hurried whisper--”you're not saying--_Tom isn't in h.e.l.l_?”

”I know he is not, I know it! Justice? it would be the most frightful injustice, because, don't you see,” she went on eagerly, ”it is just as you said,--Tom had no chance; so G.o.d could not punish him eternally for being what he had to be, born as he was, and living as he did. I don't know anything about people's souls when they die,--I mean about going to heaven,--but I do know this: as long as a soul lives it has a chance for goodness, a chance to turn to G.o.d. There is no such place as h.e.l.l!”

”But--but”--the widow faltered, ”he was cut off in his sins. The preacher wouldn't say but he was lost!” Her words were a wail of despair.

Helen groaned; she was confronted by her loyalty to John, yet the suffering of this hopeless soul! ”Listen,” she said, taking Mrs. Davis's hands in hers, and speaking slowly and tenderly, while she held the weak, s.h.i.+fting eyes by her own steady look, ”listen. I do not know what the preacher would say, but it is not true that Tom is lost; it is not true that G.o.d is cruel and wicked; it is not true that, while Tom's soul lives, he cannot grow good.”

The rigid look in the woman's face began to disappear; her hopeless belief was shaken, not through any argument, but by the mere force of the intense conviction s.h.i.+ning in Helen's eyes.

”Oh,” she said appealingly, and beginning to tremble, ”are you true with me, ma'am?”

”I am true, indeed I am!” Helen answered, unconscious that her own tears fell upon Mrs. Davis's hands; the woman looked at her, and suddenly her face began to flush that painful red which comes before violent weeping.

”If you're true, if you're right, then I can be sorry. I wouldn't let myself be sorry while I couldn't have no hope. Oh, I can be that sorry it turns me glad!”

The hardness was all gone now; she broke into a storm of tears, saying between her sobs, ”Oh, I'm so glad--I'm so glad!”

A long time the two women sat together, the widow still shaken by gusts of weeping, yet listening hungrily to Helen's words, and sometimes even smiling through her tears. The hards.h.i.+p of loss to herself and her children was not even thought of; there was only intense relief from horrible fear; she did not even stop to pity Tom for the pain of death; coming out of that nightmare of h.e.l.l, she could only rejoice.

The early sunset flashed a sudden ruddy light through the window in the front room, making a gleaming bar on the bare whitewashed wall, and startling Helen with the lateness of the hour.

”I must go now,” she said, rising. ”I will come again to-morrow.”

Mrs. Davis rose, too, lifting her tear-stained face, with its trembling smile, towards her deliverer. ”Won't you come in the other room a minute?” she said. ”I want to show you the coffin. I got the best I could, but I didn't have no pride in it. It seems different now.”

They went in together, Mrs. Davis crying quietly. Tom's face was hidden, and a fine instinct of possession, which came with the strange uplifting of the moment, made his wife shrink from uncovering it.

She stroked the varnished lid of the coffin, with her rough hands, as tenderly as though the poor bruised body within could feel her touch.

”How do you like it?” she asked anxiously. ”I wanted to do what I could fer Tom. I got the best I could. Mr. Ward give me some money, and I spent it this way. I thought I wouldn't mind going hungry, afterwards.

You don't suppose,”--this with a sudden fear, as one who dreads to fall asleep lest a terrible dream may return,--”you don't suppose I'll forget these things you've been tellin' me, and think _that_ of Tom?”

”No,” Helen answered, ”not if you just say to yourself that I told you what Mr. Dean said was not true. Never mind if you cannot remember the reasons I have given you,--I'll tell them all to you again; just try and forget what the elder said.”

”I will try,” she said; and then wavering a little, ”but the preacher, Mrs. Ward?”

”The preacher,” Helen answered bravely, ”will think this way, too, some day, I know.” And then she made the same excuse for him which she had given Alfaretta, with the same pang of regret.