The Awakening of Helena Richie Part 40

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 sunshine 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.

"He blames himself, Samuel."

"Blames himself! What reason has _he_ got to blame himself? It was my fault."

"Oh, my dear," said the poor mother, "you couldn't tell that he was going to clean your pistol."

Samuel Wright looked heavily over at Dr. Lavendar.

"Well," said the old minister, "he gave Sam the money to go away. I suppose that's on his mind, for one thing. He may think something went wrong, you know."

"Oh," broke in the mother, beginning to cry, "he Was so glad to get home; he said to me the night he got back, 'Mother, I just had to come home to you and father; I couldn't stay away any longer.' I'm sure he couldn't have said anything more loving, could he? And he kissed me.

You know he wasn't one to kiss much. Yes; he couldn't bear to be away from us. He said so."

"Go and see him, Samuel," urged Dr. Lavendar. "You, too, have lost a son, so you know now how he has felt for thirty-two years. His was a loss for which he knows he was to blame. It is a cruel knowledge, Sam?"

"It is," said the senior warden. "It is."

"Then go and comfort him."

Samuel went. A great experience had wiped the slate so clean of all the years of multiplications and additions of resentment and mortification, that the thought of facing his father did not stir his dull indifference to the whole dreary matter. When Simmons saw him coming up the garden path, he said under his breath, "Bless the Lawd!"

Then, mindful of hospitality, offered whiskey.

"Certainly not," said Samuel Wright; and the old habit of being displeased made his voice as pompous as if he cared--one way or the other. "Can you make him understand that I'm here, Simmons? Of course, I won't go up-stairs unless he wants to see me."

"He'll want to see you, suh, he'll want to see you," said Simmons.

He's right smart to-day. He kin use his left hand. He dun shuck that fist at me this mawnin'. Oh, laws, yes, he'll want to see you."

"Go and ask him."

Simmons went, and came back triumphantly. "I tole him. He didn't say nothin'. So it's all right"

The visitor went ponderously up-stairs. On the first landing he caught his breath, and stood still.

Directly opposite him, across the window of the upper hall was a horsehair-covered sofa, with great, shiny, slippery mahogany ends.

Samuel Wright put his hand up to his throat as if he were smothering.... He used to lie on that sofa on hot afternoons and study his declensions. It had no springs; he felt the hardness of it in his bones, now, and the scratch of the horsehair on his cheek. Instantly words, forgotten for a generation, leaped up:

Stella Stellae Stellae Stellam--

Mechanically his eyes turned to the side wall; an old secretary stood there, its gla.s.s doors curtained within by faded red rep. He had kept his fishing-tackle in its old cupboard; the book of flies was in a green box on the second shelf, at the left. Samuel looked at those curtained doors, and at the shabby case of drawers below them where the veneer had peeled and blistered under the hot sun of long afternoons, and the sudden surge of youth into his dry, middle-aged mind, was suffocating. Something not himself impelled him on up the half-flight from the landing, each step creaking under his heavy tread; drew him across the hall, laid his hand on the door of the secretary.... Yes; there they were: the green pasteboard box, the flannel book to hold the flies. He put out his hand stealthily and lifted the book;--rust and moth-eaten rags.

The shock of that crumbling touch and the smell of dust made him gasp- and instantly he was back again in middle age. He shut the secretary quietly, and looked around him. On the right side of the hall was a closed door. _His_ door. The door out of which he had rushed that windy March night thirty-two years ago. How hot with pa.s.sion he had been then! How cold he was now. On the other side of the hall a door was ajar; behind it was his father. He looked at it with sombre indifferent eyes; then pushed it open and entered. He saw a little figure, sunk in the heap of pillows on the big bed; a little shrunken figure, without a wig, frightened-eyed, and mumbling. Samuel Wright came forward with the confidence of apathy. As he stood at the foot of the bed, dully looking down, the thick tongue broke into a whimpering stammer:

"M-m-my f--"

And at that, something seemed to melt in the poor locked heart of the son.

_"Father!"_ said Samuel Wright pa.s.sionately. He stooped and took the helpless fingers, and held them hard in his own trembling hand.

For a moment he could not speak. Then he said some vague thing about getting stronger. He did not know what he said; he was sorry, as one is sorry for a suffering child. The figure in the bed looked at him with scared eyes. One of the pillows slipped a little, and Samuel pulled it up, clumsily to be sure, but with the decided touch of pity and purpose, the touch of the superior. That fixing the pillow behind the shaking helpless head, swept away the last traces of the quarrel.