John Ward, Preacher Part 35

The hour was full of that peculiar Sunday afternoon quiet which seems to subdue even the crickets and the birds. There was a breath of fragrance from some fresh-cut gra.s.s, still wet from a noon thunder shower, which had left the air crystal-clear and fresh. Their shadows stretched far ahead along the road, where the dust was still damp, though the setting sun poured a flood of yellow light behind them. Lois walked as though very tired; she scarcely noticed her companion, and did not speak except to answer his questions.

"Isn't there any change in Mrs. Forsythe?" he asked, with anxious sympathy.

Lois shook her head. "No," she said.

"Hasn't the rector gotten word to her son yet?"

"No," Lois said again. "We telegraphed twice, but he seems to be out of town, and n.o.body knows his address."

Gifford made no comment.

"I wish he would come!" the girl cried pa.s.sionately. "It would be a relief to have him reproach me."

"I hope there will be no need of reproaches. I do hope his mother will get well."

"Oh, no, no," Lois said, "she won't! I know it."

"Try to be more hopeful," he urged. "The doctor said there was absolutely no injury except the shock. I believe she will get well, Lois."

"Oh, you don't know her," Lois answered. "You don't know how frail she is. And then there's Mr. Denner! It is the responsibility of it that kills me, Giff! I cannot get away from it for one single minute."

They had walked along the road where the accident had taken place, and Lois shivered as she saw the trampled gra.s.s, though it had been her wish that they should come this way.

"Oh," she said, putting her hands over her eyes, "life can never look the same to me, even if they get well!"

"No," Gifford said, "I understand that. But it may have a new sweetness of grat.i.tude, Lois."

When they came to the gap in the hedge which was the outlet for the rectory path, Gifford held aside the twigs for her to enter.

"Let us sit down on the stone bench a little while," he said. "This is where poor little Mr. Denner sat that afternoon. Oh," he added in a lower tone, "just think from what a grief he may have saved us! I feel as though I could never be able to show him my grat.i.tude." Then he looked at the transplanted bunch of violets, which was fresh and flourishing, and was silent.

Lois sat down a little reluctantly. The memory of that June night, nearly a year ago, flashed into her mind; she felt the color creep up to her forehead. "Oh," she thought, "how contemptible I am to have any thought but grief,--how shallow I am, how cruel!"

And to punish herself for this, she rushed into speaking of her responsibility again.

Gifford noticed her nervousness. "She is afraid of me," he said to himself. "She wouldn't be, if she cared."

"You see, Gifford," she began, "I keep saying to myself every moment, 'I did it--it was my carelessness--all, all my fault.' Father tried to comfort me, and so did Mrs. Forsythe as soon as she could speak, and Mr.

Denner has sent word that I must not give him a thought (dear Mr.

Denner!), but oh, I know!"

Gifford looked at her pale face, with the sweet trembling lip. "It is awfully hard for you," he said.

"Every one said I was not to blame," she went on unsteadily, "that it was not my fault; but, Gifford, if they die, I shall have been their murderer!"

She pressed her hands tight together to keep her self-control.

"No, Lois," he answered gently, "it is not right to feel that; your will would be to die now for either of them" ("Oh, yes, yes!" she said), "so don't blame yourself any more than you must."

"Than I must?" she repeated slowly, looking at him with questioning eyes.

"How do you mean? They say there is no blame, Gifford."

He did not answer; his face was full of a grieved reluctance.

"Why," she said, with a quick breath, "do you blame me?"

Gifford put his strong, steady hand impulsively over hers. "I only know how you must blame yourself," he said pitifully. "I wish I could bear the pain of it for you."

"Then you say it is my fault?" she asked slowly.

"Yes, Lois," he answered, looking down at her with anxious tenderness.

"I wish I didn't have to say it, but if it is true, if you were careless, it's best to meet it. I--I wish you would let me help you bear it."

Lois sat up very straight, as though bracing herself against a blow. "You are right. I knew it was all my fault; I said so. But there's no help.

Let us go home now, please."

Gifford rose silently, and they went together between the sweet-smelling borders, up to the rectory. "I wish I could help you," he said wistfully, as she turned to say good-night at the foot of the steps.

"You cannot," she answered briefly. "No one can; and there's nothing I can do to make up for it. I cannot even die as an atonement. Oh, if I could only die!"

Gifford walked back, distressed and shocked; he was not old enough yet to know that the desire of death is part of youth, and it seemed as though he too had incurred a great responsibility. "What a brute I was to say it!" he said to himself. "I feel as though I had struck a woman. And it made her wish she was dead,--good heavens! How cruel I was! Yet if it was true, it must have been right to tell her; I suppose it was my brutal way!"

Lois went at once to Mrs. Forsythe's bedside, eager to hear of some improvement, but the invalid only shook her head wearily.

"No, no better," she said; "still breathing, that's all. But you must not grieve; it only distresses me."

Lois knelt down, and softly kissed her hand.

"My only trouble," Mrs. Forsythe continued, "is about my boy. Who will take care of him when I am gone?"

She said much more than this, and perhaps even Gifford's persistent justice could not have sustained the conviction that he had done right to tell Lois that the blame of the accident rested upon her, if he had known the thoughts of a possible atonement which pa.s.sed through her mind when Mrs. Forsythe spoke thus of her son. It was not the first time since her injury that she had told Lois of her anxiety for d.i.c.k's future, and now the girl left her with a dazed and aching heart.

Mrs. Dale, full of importance and authority, met her in the hall.

"I've got some beef-tea for Arabella Forsythe," she said, balancing the tray she carried on one hand, and lifting the white napkin with the other to see that it was all right, "if I can only persuade her to take it. I never saw anybody who needed so much coaxing. But there! I must not be hard on her; she is pretty sick, I must say,--and how she does enjoy it!

I said she would. But really, Lois, if we don't have some word from that young man soon, I don't know what we shall do, for she is certainly worse to-night. Your father has just had a letter from somebody, saying that he went away with some friends on a pleasure trip, and didn't leave his address. I thought he was so anxious to get to Ashurst,--well, that is Arabella's story. I shouldn't wonder if he didn't see his mother alive,--that's all I've got to say!"

She nodded her sleek head, and disappeared into the sick-room. Lois had a sudden contraction of the heart that made her lips white. "If aunt Deely says Mrs. Forsythe is worse, it is surely very bad."

She stumbled blindly up-stairs; she wanted to get away from everybody, and look this horrible fact in the face. She found her way to the garret, whose low, wide window, full of little panes of heavy greenish gla.s.s, looked over the tree-tops towards the western sky, still faintly yellow with sunset light, and barred by long films of gray cloud. She knelt down and laid her cheek against the sill, which was notched and whittled by childish hands; for this had been a play-room once, and many a rainy afternoon she and Helen and Gifford had spent here, masquerading in the queer dresses and bonnets packed away in the green chests ranged against the wall, or swinging madly in the little swing which hung from the bare rafters, until the bunches of southernwood and sweet-marjoram and the festoons of dried apples shook on their nails. She looked at the stars and hearts carved on the sill, and a big "Gifford" hacked into the wood, and she followed the letters absently with her finger.

"He blames me," she said to herself; "he sees the truth of it. How shall I make up for it? What can I do?"

She stayed by the window until the clouds turned black in the west; down in the heavy darkness of the garden the crickets began their monotonous z-z-ing, and in the locust-trees the katydids answered each other with a sharp, shrill cry. Then she crept down-stairs and sat outside of Mrs.

Forsythe's room, that she might hear the slightest sound, or note the flicker of the night-lamp burning dimly on the stand at the bedside.

Gifford, sitting in another sick-room, was suffering with her, and blaming himself, in spite of principle.

Mr. Denner lay in his big bed in the middle of the library. The blinds were drawn up to the tops of the long, narrow windows, that the last gleam of light might enter, but the room was full of shadows, save where a taper flickered on a small table which held the medicines.