John Ward, Preacher Part 20

"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 sunshine 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 shirt 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, shifting 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 shining 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 hardship 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.

"Yes, ma'am," the woman said, "I see. I feel now as though I could love G.o.d real hard 'cause He's good to Tom. But Mrs. Ward, the preacher must be wonderful good, fer he can think G.o.d would send my Tom to h.e.l.l, and yet he can love Him! I couldn't do it."

"Oh, he is good!" Helen cried, with a great leap of her heart.

The wind blew the powdered snow about, as she walked home in the cold white dusk, piling it in great drifts, or leaving a ridge of earth swept bare and clean. The blackened lumber-yards were quite deserted in the deepening chill which was felt as soon as the sun set; the melting snow on the hot, charred planks had frozen into long icicles, and as she stopped to look at the ruin one snapped, and fell with a splintering crash.

One of those strangely unsuggested remembrances flashed into her mind: the gleam of a dove's white wing against the burning blue of a July sky, the blaze of flowers in the rectory garden, and the subtle, penetrating fragrance of mignonette. Perhaps the contrast of the intense cold and the gathering night brought the scene before her; she sighed; if she and John could go away from this grief and misery and sin, which they seemed powerless to relieve, and from this hideous shadow of Calvinism!

"After all," she thought, hurrying along towards home and John, "Mrs.

Davis is right,--it is hard to love Him. He does not give a chance to every one; none of us can escape the inevitable past. And that is as hard as to be punished unjustly. And there is no help for it all. Oh, where is G.o.d?"

Just as she left the lumber-yard district, she heard her name called, and saw Gifford Woodhouse striding towards her. "You have been to those poor Davises I suppose," he said, as he reached her side, and took her empty basket from her hand.

"Yes," she answered, sighing. "Oh, Gifford, how dreadful it all is,--the things these people say, and really believe!" Then she told him of Elder Dean, and a little of her talk with Mrs. Davis. Gifford listened, his face growing very grave.

"And that is their idea of G.o.d?" he said, as she finished. "Well, it is mine of the devil. But I can't help feeling sorry you spoke as you did to the elder."

"Why?" she asked.

"Well," he said, "to a.s.sert your opinion of the doctrine of eternal d.a.m.nation as you did, considering your position, Helen, was scarcely wise."

"Do you mean because I am the preacher's wife?" she remonstrated, smiling. "I must have my convictions, if I am; and I could not listen to such a thing in silence. You don't know John, if you think he would object to the expression of opinion." Gifford dared not say that John would object to the opinion itself. "But perhaps I spoke too forcibly; I should be sorry to be unkind, even to Elder Dean."

"Well," Gifford said doubtfully, "I only hope he may not feel called upon to 'deal with you.'"

They laughed, but the young man added, "After all, when you come to think of it, Helen, there is no bigotry or narrowness which does not spring from a truth, and nothing is truer than that sin is punished eternally. It is only their way of making G.o.d responsible for it,--not ourselves,--and arranging the details of fire and brimstone, which is so monstrous. Somebody says that when the Calvinists decided on sulphur they did not know the properties of caustic potash. But there are stages of truth; there's no use knocking a man down because he is only on the first step of the ladder, which you have climbed into light. I think belief in eternal d.a.m.nation is a phase in spiritual development."

"But you don't really object to my protest?" she said. "Come, Giff, the truth must be strong enough to be expressed."

"I don't object to the protest," he answered slowly, "but I hope the manner of it will not make things difficult for Mr. Ward."

Helen laughed, in spite of her depression. "Why, Gifford," she said, "it is not like you to be so apprehensive, and over so small a matter, too.

Mr. Dean has probably forgotten everything I said, and, except that I mean to tell him, John would never hear a word about it."

CHAPTER XIII.

The winter was pa.s.sing very quietly in Ashurst; the only really great excitement was Helen's letter about the fire and Colonel Drayton's attack of gout.

Life went on as it had as far back as any one cared to remember, with the small round of church festivals and little teas, and the Sat.u.r.day evening whist parties at the rectory. But under monotonous calm may lurk very wearing anxiety, and this was the case in Ashurst.

Mr. Denner endeavored, with but indifferent success, to conceal the indecision which was still preying upon his mind. For the suggestion gained from Jephtha had proved useless. He had, indeed, tried to act upon it. A day or two after the thought had come to him which so interrupted family prayers, Mr. Denner sallied forth to learn his fate. It was surprising how particular he was about his linen that morning,--for he went in the morning,--and he arrayed himself in his best clothes; he saw no impropriety, considering the importance of the occasion, in putting on his evening coat. He even wore his new hat, a thing he had not done more than half a dozen times--at a funeral perhaps, or a fair--since he bought it, three years before.

It was a bright, frosty day, and the little gentleman stepped briskly along the road towards the house of the two sisters. He felt as light-hearted as any youth who goes a-wooing with a reasonable certainty of a favorable answer from his beloved. He even sang a little to himself, in a thin, sweet voice, keeping time with his stick, like a drum-major, and dwelling faithfully on all the prolonged notes.

"Believe me," sang Mr. Denner,--