John Ward, Preacher Part 56

Mr. Dale stopped digging in his flower-pots, and looked at her without speaking for a moment; then he said, "I wonder if you will not be something n.o.bler by the discipline of this quiet life, Helen? And are you not really doing something if you rouse us out of our sleepy satisfaction with our own lives, and make us more earnest? I know that cannot be your object, as it would defeat itself by self-consciousness, but it is true, my dear."

She did not speak.

"You see," he went on, in his gentle voice, "your life cannot be negative anywhere. You have taken a stand for a vital principle, and it must make us better. Truth is like heat or light; its vibrations are endless, and are endlessly felt. There is something very beautiful to me, Helen, speaking of truth, that you and your husband, from absolutely opposite and extreme points, have yet this force of truth in your souls. You have both touched the principle of life,--he from one side, you from the other. But you both feel the pulse of G.o.d in it!"

"You know," she said gratefully, "you understand"--She stopped abruptly, for she saw Lois coming hurriedly along the road, and when she opened the gate she ran across the snowy lawn to Mr. Dale's office, instead of following the path. There was something in her face which made Helen's heart stand still.

She could not wait for her to reach the door, but went out bareheaded to meet her.

Lois took her hands between her own, which were trembling. "Gifford has sent a dispatch. I--I came to bring it to you, Helen."

Her cousin put out her hand for the telegram.

"I'm afraid John is ill," Lois said, the quick tears springing to her eyes.

"Give it to me," said Helen.

Reluctantly Lois gave her the dispatch, but she scarcely looked at it.

"Uncle Henry," she said, for Mr. Dale had followed her, and stood in speechless sympathy, his white hair blowing about in the keen wind, "I will go to Mercer now. I can make the train. Will you let me have your carriage?"

Her voice was so firm and her manner so calm Lois was deceived. "She does not understand how ill John is," she thought.

But Mr. Dale knew better. "How love's horror of death sweeps away all small things," he said, as he sat alone in his study that night,--"time, hope, fear, even grief itself!"

His wife did not enter into such a.n.a.lysis; she had been summoned, and had seen to wraps and money and practical things, and then had gone crying up-stairs. "Poor child," she said, "poor child! She doesn't feel it yet."

A calamity like this Mrs. Dale could understand; she had known the sorrow of death, and all the impatience which had stood between Helen and herself was swept away in her pitying sympathy.

As for Lois, Helen had not forbidden her, and she too had gone to Mercer.

Helen had not seemed even to notice her presence in the carriage, and she dared not speak. She thought, in a vague way, that she had never known her cousin before. Helen, with white, immovable face, sat leaning forward, her hand on the door, her tearless eyes straining into the distance, and a tense, breathless air of waiting about her.

"May I go to Lockhaven with you?" Lois asked softly; but Helen did not answer until she had repeated the question, and then she turned with the start of one suddenly wakened, and looked at her.

"Oh, you are here?" she said. "You were good to come, but you must not go further than Mercer." Then she noticed that the window beside Lois was open, and leaned forward to close it. After that, she lapsed again into her stony silence.

When they reached the station, it was she who bought the ticket, and then again seemed startled to find the girl by her side. "Good-by," she said, as Lois kissed her, but there was no change in her face, either of relief or regret, when her cousin left her.

How that long slow journey pa.s.sed Helen never knew. She was not even conscious of its length. When Gifford met her, she gave him one questioning look.

"Yes," he said tenderly, "you are in time. He would not let me send before, Helen; and I knew you would not come unless I said, 'John sends for you.'"

"No," she answered. He told her, in their quick ride to the parsonage, that this had been the third hemorrhage, and John had not rallied; but it was not until the night before that he had known the end was inevitable and near, and had sent for his wife.

Oh, the strangeness of those village streets! Had she ever been away?

These months in Ashurst were a dream; here only was reality and death.

Alfaretta could not speak as she met them at the gate, but ran by Helen's side, and furtively kissed her hand. There was a light burning in the study, but Helen stood at the table in the hall and took off her bonnet and cloak.

"I will go and tell him you are here," Gifford said, trying to detain her as she turned to go up-stairs.

"He knows," she said calmly, and left Gifford and the servant standing in the entry.

She did not even pause at the door; there seemed no need to gather strength for the shock of that meeting; she was all strength and love.

The room was lighted only by the fire, and the bed was in shadow.

There were no words; those empty, dying arms were stretched out to her, and she gathered him close to her heart.

The house was strangely silent. Again and again Gifford crept up to the door, but all was quite still; once he heard that soft sound which a mother makes when she soothes her baby on her breast, and again a low murmur, which died away as though even words were an intrusion.

All that long winter day, Gifford, in his intense anxiety lest Helen should not come in time, and his distress for the sorrow of this little household, had been calmed and comforted by John's serene courage. He knew that death was near, but there was an exultant look in his fading eyes, and sometimes his lips moved in grateful prayer. Perhaps his physical extremity had dulled his fears for his wife's salvation into a conviction that his death was to be the climax of G.o.d's plans for her. He was bewildered at the temptation of greater joy at the prospect of her presence than grat.i.tude that G.o.d should save her soul alive. But he never for one moment doubted she would come to tell him she had found the light.

The night wore heavily on. Gifford stationed himself upon the stairs, outside the door; the doctor came, and then went quietly down to John's study, and found a book to while away the time. And then they waited.

When the first faint lightening of the sky came and the chill of dawn began to creep through the silent house, Helen came out of the closed room. She put her hand upon Gifford's shoulder. "Go and rest," she said; "there is no need to sit here any longer. John is dead."

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

After it was all over, they begged her to go back to Ashurst.

"You can't stay here," Lois entreated--she had come with Mr. Dale as soon as the news of John Ward's death reached Ashurst--"you can't live among these people, Helen."

But Helen shook her head. "They are John's people. I cannot go yet."

Lois thought with a shiver of the exhortations of the clergymen who had come to the funeral to officiate. She wondered how Helen could stay where every one had heard her sin of unbelief publicly prayed for; yet, with her cousin's brave sad eyes upon her, she dared not give this as a reason why Helen should leave Lockhaven.

Mr. Dale did not urge her to return; he knew her too well. He only said when he went away, holding her hands in his and looking at her, his gentle old face quivering with tears, "He is all yours now, my dear; death has given you what life could not. No matter where you are, nothing can change the perfect possession."

There was a swift, glad light in the eyes she lifted to his for a moment, but she did not answer.

At first she had been stunned and dazed; she had not realized what her sorrow was; an artificial courage came to her in the thought that John was free, and the terrible and merciful commonplace of packing and putting in order, hid her from herself.

She had stayed behind in the small brown parsonage, with only Alfaretta for a companion, and Gifford's unspoken sympathy when he came every day to see her. Once she answered it.

"I am glad it is John instead of me," she said, with an uplifted look; "the pain is not his."

"And it is so much happier for him now," Gifford ventured to say,--"he must see so clearly; and the old grief is lost in joy."

"No," Helen answered wearily; "you must not say those things to me. I cannot feel them. I am glad he has no pain,--in an eternal sleep there is at least no pain. But I must just wait my life out, Gifford. I cannot hope; I dare not. I could not go on living if I thought he were living somewhere, and needing me. No, it is ended. I have had my life."

She listened in eager and pathetic silence to every detail of John's life since she had left him which Alfaretta or Gifford could give her. A little later, she asked them both to write out all that they remembered of those last days. She dared not trust the sacred memory only to her heart, lest the obliterating years should steal it from her. And then, by and by, she gathered up all her power of endurance, and quietly went back to Ashurst. That last night in the little low-browed parsonage not even Alfaretta was with her. Gifford left her on the threshold with a terrible fear in his heart, and he came to the door again very early in the morning; but she met him calmly, with perfect comprehension of the anxiety in his face.

"You need not be afraid for me," she said. "I do not dare to be a coward."

And then she walked to the station, without one look back at the house where she had known her greatest joy and greatest grief.