The Awakening of Helena Richie Part 50

"Perhaps she feels that it would be better for David to be-in different surroundings."

"But w.i.l.l.y! Wednesday night she told me that I must be sure and bring him back to her on Sat.u.r.day. What has happened between Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day?"

"Very likely nothing has happened between Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day. But perhaps she has just made up her mind."

"Ho!" said Dr. Lavendar; and after a while he added, "'Um."

Monday morning he went up to the Stuffed Animal House. But Mrs. Richie sent word down-stairs that she wasn't well; would he be so kind as to excuse her and to keep David a little longer. Sarah, when she gave the message, looked as mystified as Dr. Lavendar felt. "I always thought she was just wrapped up in that there boy," she told Maggie; "and yet she lets him stay away two days after he gets home!" Dr. Lavendar, poking on with Goliath up the hill to Benjamin Wright's, had very much the same feeling: "Queer! I wish w.i.l.l.y wasn't bottled up; of course he knows what it means. Well; if I wait, she'll explain it herself."

But many days were to pa.s.s before Helena made any effort to explain.

And meantime Dr. Lavendar's mind was full of something else: old Benjamin Wright was running down-hill very rapidly.

In certain ways he seemed better; he could talk--and swear--quite fluently. "He sayed to me, this mawnin'," Simmons told Dr. Lavendar, "'Simmons, you freckled n.i.g.g.e.r,' he sayed, 'in the name of Lot's wife, who salted my porridge?' He spoke out just as plain!" Simmons detailed this achievement of the poor dulled tongue, with the pride of a mother repeating her baby's first word. Then he simpered with a little vanity of his own: "He was always one to notice my freckles," he said.

Benjamin Wright, lying in his bed with his hat on noticed other things than Simmons's freckles, and spoke of them, too, quite distinctly. "My boy, S-Sam, is a good boy. He comes up every day. Well, Lav-Lavendar, sometimes I think I was--at fault?"

"I know you were, Benjamin. Have you told him so?"

"Gad-a-mercy! N-no!" snarled the other. "He would be too puffed up.

Won't do to make young people v-vain."

He "took notice," too, Simmons said, of the canaries; and he even rolled out, stammeringly, some of his favorite verses. But, in spite of all this, he was running down-hill; he knew it himself, and once he told Dr. Lavendar that this business of dying made a man narrow. "I th-think about it all the time," he complained. "Can't put my mind on anything else. It's d.a.m.ned narrowing."

Yet William King said to Dr. Lavendar that he thought that if the old man could be induced to talk of his grandson, he might rally. "He never speaks of him," the doctor said, "but I am sure he is brooding over him all the time. Once or twice I have referred to the boy, but he pretends not to hear me. He's using up all his strength to bear the idea that he is to blame, I wish I could tell him that he isn't," the doctor ended, sighing.

They had met in the hall as William was coming down-stairs and Dr.

Lavendar going up. Simmons, who had been shuffling about with a decanter and hospitable suggestions, had disappeared into the dining- room.

"Well," said Dr. Lavendar, "why don't you tell him? Though in fact, perhaps he is to blame in some way that we don't know? You remember, he said he had 'angered the boy'?"

"No; that wasn't it," said William.

Dr. Lavendar looked at him with sudden attention. "Then what--" he began, but a lean, freckled shadow in the dining-room doorway, spoke up:

"Maybe he might 'a' made Marster Sam's Sam mad, suh, that night; maybe he might 'a'. But that weren't no reason," said Simmons, in a quivering voice, "for a boy to hit out and give his own grandfather a lick. No, suh; it warn't. An' call him a liar!" Dr. Lavendar and William King stared at each other and at the old man, in shocked dismay. "His grandfather used words, maybe, onc't in a while," Simmons mumbled on, "but they didn't mean no mo'n skim-milk. Don't I know?

He's d.a.m.ned me for forty years, but he'll go to heaven all the same.

The Lawd wouldn't hold it up agin' him. if a pore n.i.g.g.e.r wouldn't. If He would, I'd as lief go to h.e.l.l with Mr. Benjamin as any man I know.

Yes, suh, as I would with you yo'self, Dr. Lavendar. He was cream kind; yes, he was! One o' them pore white-trash boys at Morison's shanty Town, called me 'Ashcat' onc't; Mr. Wright he cotched him, and licked him with his own hands, suh! An' he was as kind to Marster Sam as if he was a baby. But Marster Sam hit him a lick. No, suh; it weren't right--" Simmons rubbed the cuff of his sleeve over his eyes, and the contents of the tilting decanter dribbled down the front of his spotted old coat.

"Simmons," said Dr. Lavendar, "what had they been quarrelling about?"

But Simmons said glibly, that 'fore the Lawd, he didn't know.

"He does know," said Dr. Lavendar, as the man again retired to his pantry. "But, after all, the subject of the quarrel doesn't make any difference. To think that the boy struck him! That must be a satisfaction to Benjamin."

"A satisfaction?" William repeated, bewildered.

But Dr. Lavendar did not explain. He went on up-stairs, and sat beside the very old man, listening to his m.u.f.fled talk, and saying what he could of commonplace things. Once Benjamin Wright asked about Mrs.

Richie:

"That female at the S-Stuffed Animal House-how is she? Poor cr- creeter; pretty creeter! Tell her--"

"What, Benjamin?"

"Nothing." And then abruptly, "It was my fault. I made him angry. Tell her."

He did not refer to her again; nor did he speak of the boy, except at the very end. The end came the week that David was staying at the Rectory; and perhaps Dr. Lavendar's pitying absorption in that dreary dying, made him give less thought to the pleasure as well as the perplexity of the child's presence; though certainly, when he got back from his daily visit at The Top, he found David a great comfort. Dr.

Lavendar stopped twice that week to see Mrs. Richie, but each time she sent word that she was engaged, would he excuse her? "Engaged," in the sense of not wishing to see a neighbor, was a new word in Old Chester.

Dr. Lavendar did not insist. He went on up the hill to that other house, where, also, there was a deep preoccupation which Benjamin Wright had called "narrowing"; but here he was not shut out. He always stopped to say a friendly word to Simmons, sniffling wretchedly about among the cages in the dining-room, and then went on up-stairs.

On this October afternoon the old servant sneaked up at his heels; and sliding into the room behind him as noiselessly as a shadow, settled down on his hunkers close to the bedside. Once he put up a lean yellow hand, and patted the bedclothes; but he made no more claim to attention than a dog might have done. Dr. Lavendar found his senior warden in the sick-room. Of late Samuel had been there every day; he had very little to say to his father, not from any lingering bitterness, but because, to poor Samuel, all seemed said--the boy was dead. When Dr. Lavendar came in he glanced at the bed, and then, with a start, at the heavy middle-aged figure sitting listlessly at the bedside. Samuel nodded solemnly.

"A matter of hours, William says. I shall not go home until it's over."

"Does he hear you?" said Dr. Lavendar, in a low voice, leaning over to look into the gray face.

"Oh, no;" said Samuel.

The dying man opened one eye and looked at his son. "How much you know!" he said, then closed it again.

"Are you comfortable, Benjamin?" Dr. Lavendar asked him. There was no reply.

Samuel's face reddened. "You can't tell when he hears," he said. It was then that Simmons put out his hand and patted the bedclothes over the old feet.

They sat there beside him for an hour before Benjamin Wright spoke again; then William King came in, and stood looking down at him.

"He'll just sleep away," he told the son.

"I hope he is prepared," said Samuel, and sighed. He turned his back on the big bed with the small figure sliding down and down towards the foot-board, and looked out of the window. The boy had not been prepared!

Suddenly, without opening his eyes, Benjamin Wright began:

"'Animula vagula blandula, Hospes comesque corporis, Qua nunc abibis in loca?'

"What do you think, Lavendar?"

"It will return to G.o.d, who gave it," said Dr. Lavendar.

There was another silence; until he wakened to say, brightly, "Simmons, you freckled n.i.g.g.e.r, you'd better wring their necks, now, I guess."

"No, suh," came a murmur from the shadow on the floor, "I'm a-goin to take care of 'em fine. Yes, suh, I'll chop their eggs small; I sho'ly will."

The dying hand began to wander over the coverlet; his son took it, but was fretfully repulsed; then Dr. Lavendar made a sign, and Simmons laid his thin old hand on it, and Benjamin Wright gave a contented sigh. After a while he opened that one eye again, and looked at Dr.

Lavendar; "Isn't it cus-customary on such occasions, to--admonish?" he said, peevishly; "you ain't doing your duty by me, Lavendar."

"You don't need admonition, Benjamin. You know what to do."

Silence again, and after a while a broken murmur: "'I here forget...

cancel all grudge, repeal thee...'" Then distinctly and quietly he said: "Sam, will you forgive me?"