John Ward, Preacher Part 8

"I've spilt dad's beer," she said, sobbing, and sinking down in a forlorn heap on the ground.

John knelt beside her, and tried to comfort her. "Never mind; we'll go and tell dad it was an accident."

But Molly only shook her head. "No," she said, catching her breath, as she tried to speak, "'t won't do no good. He'll beat me. He's getting over a drunk, so he wanted his beer, and he'll lick me."

John looked down sadly at the child for a moment. "I will take you home, Helen, and then I will go back with Molly."

"Oh," Helen answered quickly, "let me go with you?"

"No," John replied, "no, dear. You heard what Molly said? I--I cannot bear that your eyes should see--what must be seen in Tom Davis's house to-night. We will go to the parsonage now, and then Molly and I will tell dad about the beer." He lifted the child gently in his arms, and stooped again for the pitcher. "Come, Helen," he said, and they went towards the parsonage. Helen entered reluctantly, but without a protest, and then stood watching them down the street. The little yellow head had fallen on John's shoulder, and Molly was almost asleep.

Tom Davis's house was one of a row near the river. They had been built on piles, so as to be out of the way of the spring "rise," but the jar and shock of the great cakes of ice floating under them when the river opened up had given them an unsteady look, and they leaned and stumbled so that the stained plastering had broken on the walls, and there were large cracks by the window frames. The broken steps of Molly's home led up to a partly open door. One panel had been crushed in in a fight, and the k.n.o.b was gone, and the door-posts were dirty and greasy. The narrow windows were without shutters, and only a dingy green paper shade hid the room within.

Molly opened her sleepy eyes long enough to say, "Don't let dad lick me!"

"No, little Molly," John said, as he went into the small entry, and knocked at the inner door. "Don't be afraid."

"Come in," a woman's voice answered.

Mrs. Davis was sitting by the fireless stove, on which she had placed her small lamp, and she was trying by its feeble light to do some mending.

Her face had that indifference to its own hopelessness which forbids all hope for it. She looked up as they entered.

"Oh, it's the preacher," she said, with a flickering smile about her fretful lips; and she rose, brushing some lifeless strands of hair behind her ears, and pulling down her sleeves, which were rolled above her thin elbows.

"Molly has had an accident, Mrs. Davis," John explained, putting the child gently down, and steadying her on her uncertain little feet, until her eyes were fairly opened. "So I came home with her to say how it happened."

"She spilt the beer, I reckon," said Mrs. Davis, glancing at the empty jug John had put on the table. "Well, 't ain't no great loss. He's asleep, and won't know nothing about it. He'll have forgot he sent her by mornin'." She jerked her head towards one side of the room, where her husband was lying upon the floor. "Go get the preacher a chair, Molly.

Not that one; it's got a leg broke. Oh, you needn't speak low," she added, as John thanked the child softly; "he won't hear nothing before to-morrow."

The lumberman lay in the sodden sleep with which he ended a spree. He had rolled up his coat for a pillow, and had thrown one arm across his purple, bloated face. Only the weak, helpless, open mouth could be seen.

His muscular hands were relaxed, and the whole prostrate figure was pathetic in its unconsciousness of will and grotesque unhumanness. Fate had been too strong for Tom Davis. His birth and all the circ.u.mstances of his useless life had brought him with resistless certainty to this level, and his progress in the future could only be an ever-hastening plunge downward.

But the preacher did not consider fate when he turned and looked at the drunken man. A stern look crept over the face which had smiled at Molly but a moment before.

"This is the third time," he said, "that this has happened since Tom came and told me he would try to keep sober. I had hoped the Spirit of G.o.d had touched him."

"I know," the woman answered, turning the coat she was mending, and moving the lamp a little to get a better light; "and it's awful hard on me, so it is; that's where all our money goes. I can't get shoes for the children's feet, let alone a decent rag to put on my back to wear of a Sabbath, and come to church. It's hard on me, now, I tell you, Mr. Ward."

"It is harder on him," John replied. "Think of his immortal soul. Oh, Mrs. Davis, do you point out to him the future he is preparing for himself?"

"Yes," she said, "I'm tellin' him he'll go to h.e.l.l all the time; but it don't do no good. Tom's afraid of h.e.l.l, though; it's the only thing as ever did keep him straight. After one o' them sermons of yours, I've known him swear off as long as two months. I ain't been to church this long time, till last Sabbath; and I was hopin' I'd hear one of that kind, all about h.e.l.l, Mr. Ward, so I could tell Tom, but you didn't preach that way. Not but what it was good, though," she added, with an evident wish to be polite.

John's face suddenly flushed. "I--I know I did not, but the love of G.o.d must constrain us, Mrs. Davis, as well as the fear of h.e.l.l."

Mrs. Davis sighed. Tom's spiritual condition, which had roused a momentary interest, was forgotten in the thought of her own misery.

"Well, it's awful hard on me," she repeated with a little tremor in her weak chin.

John looked at her with infinite pity in his eyes. "Yes," he said, "hard on you, because of the eternal suffering which may come to your husband.

Nothing can be more frightful than to think of such a thing for one we love. Let us try to save him; pray always, pray without ceasing for his immortal soul, that he may not slight the day of salvation, and repent when it is too late to find the mercy of G.o.d. Oh, the horror of knowing that the day of grace has gone forever! 'For my spirit shall not always strive with man.'"

He went over to the drunken man, and, kneeling down beside him, took one of the helpless hands in his. Mrs. Davis put down her sewing, and watched him.

Perhaps the preacher prayed, as he knelt there, though she could not hear him; but when he rose and said good-night, she could see his sad eyes full of trouble which she could not understand, a pity beyond her comprehension.

Molly came sidling up to her protector, as he stood a moment in the doorway, and, taking his hand in hers, stroked it softly.

"I love you, preacher," she said, "'cause you're good."

John's face brightened with a sudden smile; the love of little children was a great joy to him, and the touch of these small hands gave him the indefinable comfort of hope. G.o.d, who had made the sweetness of childhood, would be merciful to his own children. He would give them time, He would not withdraw the day of grace; surely Tom Davis's soul would yet be saved. There was a subtle thought below this of hope that for Helen, too, the day of grace might be prolonged, but he did not realize this himself; he did not know that he feared for one moment that she might not soon accept the truth. He was confident, he thought, of her, and yet more confident of the constraining power of the truth itself.

He looked down at Molly, and put his hand gently on her yellow head.

"Be a good girl, my little Molly;" then, with a quiet blessing upon the dreary home, he turned away.

But what Mrs. Davis had said of going to church to hear a sermon on h.e.l.l, and her evident disappointment, did not leave his mind. He walked slowly towards the parsonage, his head bent and his hands clasped behind him, and a questioning anxiety in his face. "I will use every chance to speak of the certain punishment of the wicked when I visit my people," he said, "but not in the pulpit. Not where Helen would hear it--yet. In her frame of mind, treating the whole question somewhat lightly, not realizing its awful importance, it would be productive of no good. I will try, little by little, to show her what to believe, and turn her thoughts to truth.

For the present that is enough, that is wisest." And then his heart went back to her, and how happy they were. He stopped a moment, looking up at the stars, and saying, with a breathless awe in his voice, "My G.o.d, how good Thou art, how happy I am!"

CHAPTER VII.

The little stir which the arrival of the Forsythes made in Ashurst was delightful.

"Of course," as Mrs. Dale said, "Arabella Forsythe had not been born there, and could not be expected to be just like Ashurst people; but it was something to have a new person to talk to, even if you had to talk about medicines most of the time."

Lois Howe enjoyed it, for there were very few young people in Ashurst that summer; the two Drayton girls had gone away to visit a married brother, and there were no young men now Gifford had gone. So it was pleasant to have a person of her own age to talk to, and sometimes to walk with, though the rector never felt quite sure what his sister would say to that. However, Mrs. Dale had nothing to say; she shut her eyes to any impropriety, and even remarked severely to Miss Deborah Woodhouse that those old-fashioned ideas of a girl's being always under her mother's eye, were prim and old maidish; "and beside, Lois's mother is dead," she added, with a sort of triumph in her voice.

As for Lois, she almost forgot that she had thought Ashurst lonely when Helen had gone, and Gifford; for of course, in so small a place, every one counted. She had wondered, sometimes, before the Forsythes came, with a self-consciousness which was a new experience, if any one thought she missed Gifford. But her anxiety was groundless,--Ashurst imagination never rose to any such height; and certainly, if the letters the young man wrote to her could have been seen, such a thought would not have been suggested. They were pleasant and friendly; very short, and not very frequent; mostly of Helen and what she did; there was almost nothing of himself, and the past, at least as far as a certain night in June was concerned, was never mentioned. At first this was a relief to Lois, but by and by came a feeling too negative to be called pique, or even mortification at having been forgotten; it was rather an intangible soreness in her memory of him.

"It is just as Miss Deborah says," she said to herself: "young men always forget those things. And it is better that they do. Gifford never thinks of what he said to me, and I'm sure I'm glad he doesn't--but still!" And then that absurd suggestion of Miss Deborah's about Helen would creep into her mind; she might banish it, because it was silly and impossible, yet she did not utterly forget it. However, she really thought very little about it; the presence of Mrs. Forsythe and her son gave her plenty of occupation. There was the round of teas and dinners which Ashurst felt it inc.u.mbent to give to a new arrival, and Lois was to have two new gowns in consequence of so much gayety.

She spent a good deal of time with Mrs. Forsythe, for the elder lady needed her, she said. It was not altogether the companionship which fascinated Lois: the sunny drawing-room of the house the Forsythes had hired was filled with dainty things, and light, graceful furniture, and many harmlessly silly novels; there was a general air about it of belonging to a life she had never seen which made it a pleasure to come into it. The parlors in Ashurst had such heavy, serious chairs and tables, she said to herself, and the pictures were all so dark and ugly, and she was so tired of the carpets.

So she was very glad when Mrs. Forsythe begged her to come and read aloud, or fix her flowers, or even stroke her soft white hair when she had a headache. "d.i.c.k may be at home, my dear," Mrs. Forsythe would say in her deprecating voice, "but you won't mind him?" And soon Lois did not mind him at all.

At first she was very shy in the presence of this light-hearted young fellow, whose indifference to Ashurst opinion was very impressive; but by and by that wore off, and Mrs. Forsythe's drawing-room echoed with their young laughter. Lois began to feel with d.i.c.k the freedom and friendliness which had once been only for Gifford. "Why couldn't Giff have been like this?" she thought; yet she did not say that she and Mr. Forsythe were like "brother and sister," for she was always conscious of a possibility in their friendship; but it was enough that Mr. Forsythe was very interesting, and that that summer, life was very delightful.

After all, love is frequently a matter of propinquity.

d.i.c.k found himself going often to the rectory, and Lois fell into the habit of making her plans with the reservation, "In case Mr. Forsythe calls;" and it generally happened that he did call. "Mother sends her love, and will Miss Lois come and read to her a little while this afternoon, if she is not too busy?" or, "Mother returns this dish, and begs me to thank you for the jelly, and to tell Jean how good it was."

It was easy for d.i.c.k to manufacture errands like these. Dr. Howe began to think young Forsythe spent the greater part of his time at the rectory.

But this did not trouble him at all; in fact it was a satisfaction that this lively young man liked the rectory so much. Dr. Howe did not go very far into the future in his thoughts; he was distinctly flattered in the present. Of course, if anything came of it (for the rector was not entirely unworldly), why, it would be all for the best. So he was quite patient if Lois was not on hand to hunt up a book for him or to fetch his slippers, and he fell into the habit of spending much time in Mr.

Denner's office, looking over the "Field" and talking of their next hunting trip. He was not even irritated when, one morning, wishing to read a letter to his daughter, he had gone all over the house looking for her, and then had caught a glimpse of her through the trees, down in the sunny garden, with d.i.c.k Forsythe. "I'll just let that letter wait,"

he said, and went and stretched himself comfortably on the slippery, leather-covered sofa in the shaded library, with a paper in his hand and a satisfied smile on his lips.

The garden was ablaze with color, and full of all sorts of delicious scents and sounds. The gay old-fashioned flowers poured a flood of blossoms through all the borders: hollyhocks stood like rockets against the sky; sweet-peas and scarlet runners scrambled over the box hedges and about the rose-bushes; mallows and sweet-williams, asters and zinias and phlox, crowded close together with a riotous richness of tint; scarlet and yellow nasturtiums streamed over the ground like molten sunshine; and, sparkling and glinting through the air, b.u.t.terflies chased up and down like blossoms that had escaped from their stems.