Part 40 (1/2)

All Old Chester, saddened and awed, came to show its sympathy for the stricken parents, and its pity, if nothing more, for the dead boy. But Helena, ghastly pale, had no room in her mind for either pity or sympathy. She heard Mr. Dilworth's subdued voice directing her to a pew, and a few minutes afterwards found herself sitting between Dr.

and Mrs. King. Martha greeted her with an appropriate sigh; but Mrs., Richie did not notice her. There was no sound in the waiting church except once in a while a long-drawn breath, or the faint rustle of turning leaves as some one looked for the burial service. The windows with their little border of stained gla.s.s, were tilted half-way open this hot morning, and sometimes the silence was stirred by the brush of sparrows in the ivy under the sills. On the worn carpet in the chancel the suns.h.i.+ne lay in patches of red and blue and purple, that flickered noiselessly when the wind moved the maple leaves outside; it was all so quiet that Helena could hear her own half-sobbing breaths.

After a while, the first low note of the organ crept into the stillness, and as it deepened into a throbbing chord, there was the grave rustle of a rising congregation. Then from the church door came the sudden shock of words:

”_I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord._”

Helena, clutching at the back of the next pew, stood up with the rest.

Suddenly she swayed, as though the earth was moving under her feet....

The step of the bearers came heavily up the aisle. Her eyes fled from what they carried--(”oh, was he so tall?”)--and then shuddered back again to stare.

Martha King touched her arm; ”We sit down now.”

Helena sat down. Far outside her consciousness words were being said: ”Now is Christ risen--” but she did not hear them; she did not see the people about her. She only saw, before the chancel, that long black shape. After a while the doctor's wife touched her again; ”Here we stand up.” Mechanically, she rose; her lips were moving in a terrified whisper, and Martha King, glancing at her sidewise, looked respectfully away. ”Praying,” the good woman thought; and softened a little.

But Helena was far from prayer. As she stared at that black thing before the chancel, her selfishness uncovered itself before her eyes and showed its nakedness.

The solid ground of experience was heaving and staggering under her feet, and in the midst of the elemental tumult, she had her first dim glimpse of responsibility. It was a blasting glimpse, that sent her cowering back to a.s.sertions of her right to her own happiness.

Thirteen years ago Lloyd had made those a.s.sertions, and she had accepted them and built them into a shelter against the a.s.sailing consciousness that she was an outlaw, pillaging respect and honor from her community. Until now nothing had ever shaken that shelter. Nor had its dark walls been pierced by the disturbing light of any heavenly vision declaring that when personal happiness conflicts with any great human ideal, the right to claim such happiness is as nothing compared to the privilege of resigning it. She had not liked the secrecy which her shelter involved, no refined temperament likes secrecy. But the breaking of the law, in itself, had given her no particular concern; behind her excusing plat.i.tudes she had always been comfortable enough.

Even that whirlwind of anger at Benjamin Wright's contempt had only roused her to b.u.t.tress her shelter with declarations that she was not harming anybody. But sitting there between William King and his wife, in the midst of decorously mournful Old Chester, she knew she could never say that any more; not only because a foolish and ill-balanced youth had been unable to survive a shattered ideal, but because she began suddenly and with consternation to understand that the whole vast fabric of society rested on that same ideal. And she had been secretly undermining it! Her breath caught, strangling, in her throat.

In the crack of the pistol and the crash of ruined family life she heard for the first time the dreadful sound of the argument of her life to other lives; and at that sound the very foundation of those excuses of her right to happiness, rocked and crumbled and left her selfishness naked before her eyes.

It was so unbearable, that instantly she sought another shelter: obedience to the letter of the Law--Marriage. To marry her fellow outlaw seemed to promise both shelter and stability--for in her confusion she mistook marriage for morality. At once! Never mind if he were tired of her; never mind if she must humble what she called her pride, and plead with him to keep his word; never mind anything-- except this dreadful revelation: that no one of us may do that which, if done by all, would destroy society. Yes; because she had not understood that, a boy had taken his own life.... Marriage! That was all she thought of; then, suddenly, she cowered--the feet of the bearers again.

”I will be married,” she said with dry lips, ”oh, I will-I _will_!”

And Martha King, looking at her furtively, thought she prayed.

It was not a prayer, it was only a promise. For with the organic upheaval into her soul of the primal fact of social responsibility, had come the knowledge of guilt.

_But the Lord was not in the earthquake._

CHAPTER XXV

Benjamin Wright lay in his great bed, that had four mahogany posts like four dark obelisks. ... He had not spoken distinctly since the night of his seizure, though in about a fortnight he began to babble something which n.o.body could understand. Simmons said he wanted his birds, and brought two cages and hung them in the window, where the roving, unhappy eyes could rest upon them. He mumbled fiercely when he saw them, and Simmons cried out delightedly: ”There now, he's better-- he's swearin' at me!” The first intelligible words he spoke were those that had last pa.s.sed his lips: ”M-m-my f-f--,” and from his melancholy eyes a meagre tear slid into a wrinkle and was lost.

Dr. Lavendar, sitting beside him, put his old hand over the other old hand, that lay with puffed fingers motionless on the coverlet. ”Yes, Benjamin, it was your fault, and mine, and Samuel's. We were all responsible because we did not do our best for the boy. But remember, his Heavenly Father will do His best.”

”M-m-my f--” the stammering tongue began again, but the misery lessened in the drawn face. Any denial of the fact he tried to state would have maddened him. But Dr. Lavendar never denied facts; apart from the question of right and wrong, he used to say it was not worth while. He accepted old Mr. Wright's responsibility as, meekly, he had accepted his own, but he saw in it an open door.

And that was why he went that evening to the Wright house. It was a melancholy house. When their father was at home, the little girls whispered to each other and slipped away to their rooms, and when they were alone with their mother, they quivered at the sight of her tears that seemed to flow and flow and flow. Her talk was all of Sam's goodness and affection and cleverness. ”He read such learned books!

Why, that very last afternoon, when we were all taking naps, he was reading a big leather-covered book from your father's library, all about the Nations. And he could make beautiful poetry,” she would tell them, reading over and over with tear-blinded eyes some sc.r.a.ps of verse she had found among the boy's possessions. But most of all she talked of Sam's gladness in getting home, and how strange it was he had taken that notion to clean that dreadful pistol. No wonder Lydia and her sisters kept to themselves, and wandered, little scared, flitting creatures, through the silent house, or out into the garden, yellowing now and gorgeous in the September heats and chills.

Dr. Lavendar came in at tea-time, as he had lately made a point of doing, and sat down beside Mrs. Wright in Sam's chair.

”Samuel,” said he, when supper was over and the little girls had slipped away; ”you must comfort your father. n.o.body else can.”

The senior warden drew in his breath with a start.