To have David go away for the long-anticipated trip with Dr. Lavendar, was a relief to Helena struggling up from a week of profound prostration. Most of the time she had been in bed, only getting up to sit with David at breakfast and supper, to take what comfort she might in the little boy's joyous but friendly unconcern. He was full of importance in the prospect of his journey; there was to be one night on a railroad-car, which in itself was a serious experience; another in an hotel; hotel! David glowed at the word. In Philadelphia they were to see the sights in the morning; in the afternoon, to be sure, Dr. Lavendar had warned him that it would be necessary to sit still while some one talked. However, it is never necessary to listen. After the talking, they would go and see the ships at the wharves, and Liberty Bell. Then—David's heart sank; bed loomed before him, But it would be an hotel bed;—there was some comfort in that! Besides, it is never necessary to sleep. The next day going home on the cars they would see the Horseshoe Curve; the very words made his throat swell with excitement.
"Did the locomotive engine ever drop off of it?" he asked Helena.
"No, dear," she said languidly, but with a smile. She always had a smile for David.
After the Horseshoe Curve there would be a night at Mercer. Mercer, of course, was less exciting than Philadelphia; still, it was "travelling," and could be boasted of at recess. But as David thought of Mercer, he had a bleak revelation. For weeks his mind had been on this journey; beyond it, his thought did not go. Now, there rushed upon him the staggering knowledge that after the night in Mercer,life would still go on!Yes, he would be at home; in Miss Rose Knight's school-room; at supper with Mrs. Richie. It is a heavy moment, this first consciousness that nothing lasts. It made David feel sick; he put his spoon down and looked at Mrs. Richie. "I shall be back," he said blankly.
And at that her eyes filled. "Yes, darling! Won't that be nice!"
And yet his absence for the next few days would be a relief to her. She could think the whole thing out, she said to herself. She had not been well enough to think clearly since Lloyd had gone. To adjust her mind to the bitter finality meant swift oscillations of hate and the habit of affection—the spirit warring with the flesh. She would never see him again;—she would send for him! she despised him;—what should she do without him? Yet she never wavered about David. She had made her choice. William King's visit had not shaken her decision for an instant; it had only frightened her horribly. How should she defend herself? She meant to think it all out, undisturbed by the sweet interruptions of David's presence. And yet she knew she should miss him every minute of his absence. Miss him? If Dr. King had known what even three days without David would mean to her, he would not have wasted his breath in suggesting that she should give him up! Yet the possibility of such a thing had the allurement of terror; she played with the thought, as a child, wincing, presses a thorn into its flesh to see how long it can bear the smart. Suppose, instead of this three days' trip with Dr. Lavendar, David was going away to stay? The mere question made her catch him in her arms as if to assure herself he was hers.
The day before he started, Helena was full of maternal preoccupations. The travelling-bag that she had begun to pack for herself—for so different a journey!—had to be emptied of its feminine possessions, and David's little belongings stowed in their place. David himself had views about this packing; he kept bringing one thing or another—his rubber boots, a cocoon, a large lump of slag honeycombed with air-holes; would she please put them into the bag?
"Why, but darling, you will be back again on Saturday," she consoled him, as each treasure was rejected.—("Suppose he wasnotcoming back! How should I feel?")
He was to spend the night before the journey at the Rectory, and after supper Helena went down the hill with him. "I wish I hadn't consented to it," she said to herself; "do you like to go and leave me, David?" she pleaded.
And David jumping along at her side, said joyously, "Yes, ma'am."
At the Rectory he pushed the door open and bounded in ahead of her,"I'm here!"
Dr. Lavendar put down hisSpirit of Missions, and looked over his spectacles. "You don't say so! And you're here, too, Mrs. Richie? Come in!"
Helena, hesitating in the hall, said she had only come to leave David.But Dr. Lavendar would not listen to that.
"Sit down! Sit down!" he commanded genially.
David, entirely at home, squatted at once upon the rug beside Danny."Dr. Lavendar," she said, "you'll bring him back to me on Saturday?"
"Unless I steal him for myself," said Dr. Lavendar, twinkling at David, who twinkled back, cozily understanding.
Helena stooped over him and kissed him; then took one of his reluctant hands from its clasp about his knees and held it, patting it, and once furtively kissing it, "Good-by, David. Saturday you'll be at home again."
The child's face fell. His sigh was not personal; it only meant the temporariness of all human happiness. Staring into the fire in sudden melancholy, he said, "'By." But the next minute he sparkled into excited joy, and jumped up to hang about her neck and whisper that in Philadelphia he was going to buy a false-face for a present for Dr. Lavendar; "or else a jew's-harp. He'll give it to me afterwards; and I think I want a jew's-harp the most," he explained.
"David," Helena said in a whisper, putting her cheek down against his,"Oh, David, won't you please, give me—'forty kisses'? I'm so—lonely."
David drew back and looked hard into her face that quivered in spite of the smile she had summoned to meet his eyes. It was a long look, for a child; then suddenly, he put both arms around her neck in a breathless squeeze. "One—two—three—four—" he began.
William King, coming in for his evening smoke, saw that quick embrace; his face moved with pain, and he stepped back into the hall with some word of excuse about his coat. When he returned, she was standing up, hurrying to get away. "Saturday," she repeated to Dr. Lavendar; "Saturday, surely?"
"Why," the old man said smiling, "you make me feel like a thief. Yes; you shall have him Saturday night. Willy, my boy, do you think Mrs. Richie ought to go up the hill alone?"
"Oh, it will be bright moonlight in a few minutes," she protested nervously, not looking at the doctor.
"I will walk home with Mrs. Richie," William said.
"No! oh, no; please don't!" The dismay in her voice was unmistakable.
Dr. Lavendar thrust out a perplexed lower lip. "If she'd rather just go by herself, Willy, there are no highwaymen in Old Chester, and—"
But William King interrupted him gently. "I wish to speak to Mrs.Richie." And Dr. Lavendar held his tongue.
"I am sorry to bother you," William said, as he held the gate open for her; "but I felt I must speak to you."
Helena made no reply. All the way down the street, almost to the foot of the hill, Old Chester's evening stillness was unbroken, except for the rustle of fallen leaves under their feet. Suddenly the great disk of the hunter's moon lifted slowly up behind the hills, and the night splintered like a dark crystal; sheets of light spread sharply in the open road, gulfs of shadow deepened under trees and beside walls. It was as abrupt as sound. William King broke into hurried words as though he had been challenged: "I knew you didn't want me to walk home with you, but indeed you ought not to go up the hill alone. Please take my arm; the flagging is so uneven here."
"No, thank you."
"Mrs. Richie, please don't feel that I am not your friend, just because—Indeed, I think I am more your friend than I ever was. You will believe that, won't you?"
"Oh, I suppose so; that is the way saints always talk to sinners."
"I am far enough from being a saint," William King said with an awkward effort to laugh; "but—"
"But I am a sinner?" she interrupted.
"Oh, Mrs. Richie, don't let us talk this way! I have nothing but pity, and—and friendship. The last thing I mean to do, is to set myself as a judge of your actions; God knows I have no right to judge anybody! But this matter of David, that's what I wanted to speak to you about. My responsibility," he stopped, and drew in his breath. "Don't you see, my responsibility—"
Helena did not speak; she was marshalling all her forces to fight for her child. How should she begin? But he did not wait for her to begin.
"I would rather lose my right hand than pain you. I've gone all over it, a hundred times. I've tried to see some way out. But I can't. The only way is for you to give him up. It isn't right for you to have him! Mrs. Richie, I say this, and it is hard and cruel, and yet I never felt more"—William King stopped short—"friendly," he ended brokenly.
He was walking at a pace she found hard to follow. "I can't go quite so fast," she said faintly, and instantly he came to a dead stop.
"Dr. King, I want to explain to you—"
She lifted her face, all white and quivering in the moonlight, but instead of explanations, she broke out: "Oh, if you take him away from me, I shall die! I don't care very much about living anyhow. But I can't live without David. Please, Dr. King; oh, please; I will be good! I will be good," she repeated like a child, and stood there crying, and clinging to his arm. All her reasons and excuses and pleadings had dropped out of her mind. "Don't take him away from me; I will be good!" she said.
William King, with those trembling hands on his arm, looked down at her and trembled too. Then roughly, he pushed her hands away. "Come on. We mustn't stand here. Don't you suppose I feel this as much as you do? I love children, and I know what it means to you to let David go. But more than that, I—have a regard for you, and it pains me inexpressibly to do anything that pains you. You can't understand how terrible this is to me, and I can't tell you. I mustn't tell you. But never mind, it's true. It isn't right, no, it isn't right! that a woman who—you know what I mean. And even if, after all, you should marry him, what sort of a man is he to have charge of a little boy like David? He has deceived us, and lied to us; he is a loose liver, a—"
"Wait," she panted; "I am not going to marry him. I thought you understood that."
He drew away from her with a horrified gesture. "And you would keep an innocent child—"
"No! No! I've broken with him—on account of David!"
"Broken with him!" said William King; he caught her by the wrist, and stared at her. Then with a breathless word that she could not hear, he dropped her hand and turned his face away.
Again, in their preoccupation, they stood still; this time in a great bank of shadow by the wall of the graveyard half-way up the hill.
"So you won't take him from me?" she said; "I will leave Old Chester.You need never see me again."
"Good God!" said William King, "do you think that is what I want?"
She tried to see his face, but he had turned his back on her so that she stood behind him. Her hands were clasping and unclasping and her voice fluttering in her throat. "You won't take him?"
"Mrs. Richie," he said harshly, "do you love that man still?"
But before she could answer, he put the question aside. "No! Don't tell me. I've no right to ask. I—don't want to know. I've no right to know. It's—it's nothing to me, of course." He moved as he spoke out into the moonlight, and began to climb the pebbly road; she was a step or two behind him. When he spoke again his voice was indifferent to the point of contempt. "This side is smoother; come over here. I am glad you are not going to marry Mr. Pryor. He is not fit for you to marry."
"Not fit for—me!" she breathed.
"And I am glad you have broken with him. But that has no bearing upon your keeping David. A child is the most precious thing in the world; he must be trained, and—and all that. Whether you marry this man or not makes no difference about David. If you have lived—as you have lived—you ought not to have him. But I started the whole thing. I made Dr. Lavendar give him to you. He didn't want to, somehow; I don't know why. So don't you see? Ican'tleave him in your care. Surely you see that? I am responsible. Responsible not only to David, but to Dr. Lavendar."
"If Dr. Lavendar is willing to let me have him, I don't see why you need to feel so about it. What harm could I do him? Oh, how cruel you are—how cruel you are!"
"Would Dr. Lavendar let you have him, if—he knew?"
"But that's over; that's finished," she insisted. "Oh, I tell you, it's over!"
The doctor's silence was like a whip.
"Oh, I know; you think that he was here last week. But there has to be a beginning of everything—that was the beginning. I told him I would not give David up to marry him; and we quarrelled. And—it's over."
"I can't go into that," the doctor said. "That's not my business. David is my business. Mrs. Richie, I want you quietly, without any explanation, to give the boy back to Dr. Lavendar. If you don't, I shall have no choice. I shall have to tell him."
"But you said you wouldn't tell him! Oh, you break your word—"
"I won't tell him your affairs," said William King. "I will never do that. But I'll tell him my own—some of them. I'll say I made a mistake when I advised him to let you have David, and that I don't think you ought to be trusted to bring up a little boy. But I won't say why."
"Dr. King, if I tell him just what you've said; that you think you made a mistake, and you think I am not to be trusted;—if I tell him myself, and he consents to let me keep him, will you interfere?"
William reflected heavily. "He won't consent," he said; "he'll know I wouldn't say a thing like that without reason. But if he does, I shall be silent."
There was a despairing finality in his words. They were at her own gate now; she leaned her head down on it, and he heard a pitiful sound. William King's lips were dry, and when he spoke the effort made his throat ache. What he said was only the repetition of his duty as he saw it. "I'd rather lose my right hand than make you suffer. But I've no choice. I've no choice!" And when she did not answer, he added his ultimatum. "I'll have to tell Dr. Lavendar on Sunday, unless you will just let me settle it all for you by saying that you don't want David any long—"
"Not want David!"
"I mean, that you've decided you won't keep him any longer. I'll find a good home for him, Mrs. Richie," he ended in a shaking voice.
She gave him one look of terror; then opened the gate and shut it quickly in his face, drawing the bolt with trembling fingers. As she flew up the path, he saw her for an instant as she crossed a patch of moonlight; then the darkness hid her.
It was incredible to David as he thought it over afterwards, but he actually slept away that wonderful night on the railroad! When he climbed on to the shutting-up shelf behind red and green striped curtains, nothing had been further from his mind than sleep. It was his intention to sit bolt upright and watch the lamps swinging in the aisle, to crane his neck over the top of the curtains and look out of the small hinged window at the smoke all thick with sparks from the locomotive engine, and at the mountains with the stars hanging over them, and—at the Horseshoe Curve! But instead of seeing all these wonders that he and Dr. Lavendar had talked about for the last few weeks, no sooner had he been lifted into his berth than, in a flash, the darkness changed to bright daylight. Yes; the dull, common, every-night affair of sleep, had interfered with all his plans. He did not speak of his disappointment the next morning, as he dressed—somehow—in the jostling, swaying little enclosure where the washstands were; but he thought about it, resentfully. Sleep! "When I'm a man, I'll never sleep," he assured himself; then cheered up as he realized that absence from Sarah had brought at least one opportunity of manhood—he would not have to wash behind his ears! But he brooded over his helplessness to make up for that other loss. He was so silent at breakfast in the station that Dr. Lavendar thought he did not like his food.
"You can have something else, David. What do you want?"
"Ice-cream," David said, instantly alert.
"At breakfast!" David nodded, and the ice-cream appeared. He ate it in silence, and when he had scraped the saucer, he said,
"Can you ever get back behind, sir?"
"Behind what?" Dr. Lavendar asked. He was looking at David and wondering what was different about the child; he did not have quite his usual aspect. "I must have left off some of his clothes," Dr. Lavendar thought anxiously, and that question about getting back behind suggested buttons. "Are your braces fastened?" he asked.
"And do it over again," David said. "Is there any way you can get back behind, and do it over again?"
"Do what over again?" Dr. Lavendar said. "If they've come unfastened—"
"I don't like sleeping," said David. "If I could get behind again, I wouldn't."
Dr. Lavendar gave it up, but he fumbled under David's little coat and discovered that the buttons were all right. "There seems to be something different about you, David," he said, as they pushed their chairs from the table. David had no explanation to offer, so Dr. Lavendar consulted the waitress: "Is there anything wrong about this little boy's clothing? He doesn't look just right—"
"I guess he hasn't had his hair brushed, sir," said the smiling young woman, and carried the child off to some lair of her own, whence he emerged in his usual order.
"Thank you, my dear," said Dr. Lavendar. He took David's hand, and out they stepped into the world! For a moment they stood still on the sidewalk to get their breaths in the rush and jostle of the crowd that surged along the street; a simple, happy pair—an old man in a blue muffler and broad-brimmed felt hat, a child in a little surtout and visored cap. David gripped Dr. Lavendar's hand tight, and looked up into his face; its smile beaming upon all these hurrying people, reassured the child, and he paced along beside the old gentleman in grave content. They stopped at the first shop-window, and gazed at a row of fish bedded in ice—beautiful iridescent mackerel, fat red pompoms, and in the middle, in a nest of seaweed, green-black creatures, with great claws that ended in pincers and eyes that looked like pegs stuck into their heads. David stared, open-mouthed; then he put a hand into his pocket.
"How much would one cost, sir?"
"I don't know," said Dr. Lavendar.
"I think I will buy one, and take it home and keep it in a cage."
At which Dr. Lavendar said gravely, that he feared the creatures would not be happy in a cage—"And besides, people eat them, David."
David was silent; then, in a suppressed voice, he said, "Are they happy when people eat them? I think they'd rather be in a cage; I would hang it in my window."
But Dr. Lavendar only said, "Dear me! What have we here?" and drew him to the next shop, at the door of which stood a wooden Indian, a tomahawk in one hand, and a cigar-box in the other. Dr. Lavendar bade David wait outside while he went into this shop, which the little boy was perfectly willing to do, for it isn't every day you get the chance to examine a wooden Indian, even to climbing up on his pedestal and feeling his tomahawk with respectful fingers. When Dr. Lavendar came out, David took his kind old hand, and burst into confidences.
"When I'm big I'm going to fight Indians. Or else I'll drive fast horses. I don't know which. It's hard to decide, ain't it, sir?"
"Very hard. If you choose the horses, I'll give you Goliath."
David was silent; then he sighed: "I guess I'll fight Indians, sir," he said.
But a moment later he was cheerfully confidential; he had thirty cents to spend! "Dear, dear," said Dr. Lavendar, "we mustn't do anything rash. Here, let's look in this window."
Oh, how many windows there were, and all of them full of beautiful things! Dr. Lavendar was willing to stop at every one; and he joined in David's game of "mine," with the seriousness that all thoughtful persons give to this diversion.
"That'smine!" David would cry, pointing to a green china toad behind the plate glass; and Dr. Lavendar would say gravely,
"You may have it, David; you may have it."
"Now it's your turn!" David would instruct him.
"Must I take something in this window?" Dr. Lavendar would plead. AndDavid always said firmly that he must. "Well, then, that's mine," Dr.Lavendar would say.
"Why, that's only a teacup! We have thousands of them at our house!"David boasted. "I should think you would rather have the toad.I'll—I'll give you the toad, sir?"
"Oh, dear me, no," Dr. Lavendar protested; "I wouldn't rob you for the world." And so they sauntered on, hand in hand. When they came to a book-store, Dr. Lavendar apologized for breaking in upon their "game." "I'm going to playmine, in here," he said.
David was quite content to wait at the door and watch the people, and the yellow boxes full of windows, drawn by mules with bells jingling on their harness. Sometimes he looked fearfully back into the shop; but Dr. Lavendar was still playing "mine," so all was well. At last, however, he finished his game and came to the door.
"Come along, David; this is the most dangerous place in town!"
David looked at him with interest. "Why did you skip with your eye when you said that, sir?" he demanded.
At which the clerk who walked beside them laughed loudly, and David grew very red and angry.
But when Dr. Lavendar said, "David, I've got a bone in my arm; won't you carry a book for me?" he was consoled, and immediately began to ask questions. It seemed to Dr. Lavendar that he inquired about everything in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth, and at last the old gentleman was obliged, in self-defence, to resort to the formula which, according to the code of etiquette understood by these two friends, signified "stop talking."
"What is—" David began, and his companion replied glibly:
"Layovers for meddlers and crutches for lame ducks."
And David subsided into giggles, for it was understood that this remark was extremely humorous.
After that they went to dinner with a gentleman who wore a long black coat and no shirt; at least, David could not see any shirt. Dr. Lavendar called him Bishop, and they talked a great deal about uninteresting things. David only spoke twice: His host took occasion to remark that he did not finish all his mashed potato—"Some poor child would be glad of what you waste," said the Bishop. To which David replied, "If I ate it, what then, for the poor child?" And the gentleman with no shirt said in a grave aside to Dr. Lavendar that the present generation was inclined to pertness. His second remark was made when the clergymen pushed their chairs back from the table. But David sat still. "We haven't had the ice-cream yet," he objected, gently. "Hush! Hush!" said Dr. Lavendar. And the gentleman laughed very hard, and said that he had to send all his ice-cream to the heathen. David, reddening, looked at him in stolid silence. In the afternoon there was a pause; they went to church, and listened to another gentleman, who talked a long, long time. Sometimes David sighed, but he kept pretty quiet, considering. After the talk was over, Dr. Lavendar did not seem anxious to get away. David twitched his sleeve once or twice to indicate his own readiness, but it appeared that Dr. Lavendar preferred to speak to the talking gentleman. And the talking gentleman patted David's head and said:
"And what do you think of foreign missions, my little boy?"
David did not answer, but he moved his head from under the large white hand.
"You were very good and quiet," said the talking gentleman. "I saw you, down in the pew with Dr. Lavendar. And I was very much complimented; you never went to sleep." "I couldn't," said David, briefly; "the seats are too hard." The talking gentleman laughed a little, and you might have thought Dr. Lavendar skipped with his eye;—at any rate, he laughed.
"They don't always tell us why they keep awake," he said. And the talking gentleman didn't laugh any more.
At last, however, they stopped wasting time, and took up their round of dissipation again. They went to see Liberty Bell; then they had supper at a marble-topped table, in a room as big as a church! "Ice-cream, suh?" suggested a waiter, and David said "Yes!" Dr. Lavendar looked doubtful, but David had no doubts. Yet, half-way through that pink and white and brown mound on his saucer, he sighed, and opened and shut his eyes as if greatly fatigued.
"Finished?" Dr. Lavendar asked.
"No, sir," David said sadly, and started in with a spurt; but the mound did not seem to diminish, and suddenly his chin quivered. "If you have to pay for what I don't eat, I'll try," he said; "but my breast is cold." Reassured on this point, and furtively rubbing his little chilly stomach, David put down his spoon and slipped out of his chair, ready to make a night of it. For, supper over, they went to see a magician!
"I don't know what Mrs. Richie will say to me," said Dr. Lavendar. "You won't get to bed before ten o'clock!"
"She'll say 'all right,'" said David. Then he added, "The gentleman at dinner tells lies, or else he's foolish. It would melt before the heathen got it."
Dr. Lavendar, singing to himself—
Hither ye faithful, haste with songs of triumph,—
did not hear the morals of his bishop aspersed. He took David's hand, and by and by they were sitting staring open-mouthed at a man who put eggs in a pan, and held it over a fire, and took out live pigeons! Oh, yes, and many other wonders! David never spoke once on his way back to the hotel, and Dr. Lavendar began to be worried for fear the child was overtired. He hustled him to bed as quickly as possible, and then sat down under the far-off chandelier of the hotel bedroom, to glance at a newspaper and wait until David was asleep before he got into his own bed. He did not have to wait long for the soft breathing of childish sleep. It had been poor David's intention to go over in his mind every single thing he saw the magician do, so that he wouldn't leave out anything at recess on Monday. Alas, before he could begin to think, the sun was shining again!
It was Dr. Lavendar who did the thinking before the sunlight came. Twice, in his placid, wakeful night, he rose to make sure the child was all right, to pull up an extra blanket about the small shoulders or to arrange the pillow, punched by David's fist to the edge of the bed. In the morning he let the little boy look out of the window while he packed up their various belongings; and when it was time to start, David could hardly tear himself away from that outlook, which makes such a mystical appeal to most of us—huddling roofs and chimneys under a morning sky. But when he did turn to look at Dr. Lavendar, tucking things into his valise and singing to himself, it was to realize again the immutable past. "No," he said slowly, "you can't get back behind, and begin again." Dr. Lavendar, understanding, chuckled.
"Can God?" said David.
At that Dr. Lavendar's face suddenly shone. "David," he said, "the greatest thing in the world is to know that God is always beginning again!"
But David had turned to the window to watch a prowling cat upon a roof; and then, alas, it was time to start.
"Well," said Dr. Lavendar, as, hand in hand, they walked to the big, roaring place where the cars were, "Well, David, to-morrow we shall be at home again! You sit down here and take care of my bag while I go and get the tickets."
David slid sidewise on to the slippery wooden settee. He had nothing to say; again he felt that bleak sinking right under his little breast-bone; but it stopped in the excitement of seeing Mrs. Richie's brother coming into the waiting-room! There was a young lady at his side, and he piloted her across the big, bare room, to the very settee upon which David was swinging his small legs.
"I must see about the checks, dear," he said, and hurried off without a glance at the little boy who was guarding Dr. Lavendar's valise.
The sun pouring through the high, dusty window, shone into David's eyes. He wrinkled his nose and squinted up at the young lady from under the visor of his blue cap. She smiled down at him, pleasantly, and then opened a book; upon which David said bravely, "You're nineteen. I'm seven, going on eight."
"What!" said the young lady; she put her book down, and laughed. "How do you know I am nineteen, little boy?"
"Mrs. Richie's brother said so."
She looked at him with amused perplexity. "And who is Mrs. Richie's brother?"
David pointed shyly at the vanishing figure at the end of the waiting-room.
"Why, no, dear, that's my father."
"Iknow," said David; "he's Mr. Pryor, Mrs. Richie's brother. He comes and stays at our house."
"Stays at your house? What on earth are you talking about, you funny little boy! Where is your house?"
"O' Chester," said David.
The young lady laughed and gave him a kind glance. "You've made a mistake, I think. My father doesn't know Mrs. Richie."
David had nothing to say, and she opened her book. When Mr. Pryor returned, hurrying to collect the bags and umbrellas, David had turned his back and was looking out of the window.
It was not until they were in the train that Alice remembered to speak of the incident. "Who in the world is Mrs. Richie?" she demanded gayly, "and where is Old Chester?"
The suddenness of it was like a blow. Lloyd Pryor actually gasped; his presence of mind so entirely deserted him, that before he knew it, he had lied—and no one knew better than Lloyd Pryor that it is a mistake to lie hurriedly.
"I—I don't know! Never heard of either of them."
His confusion was so obvious that his daughter gave him a surprised look. "But I'm told you stay at Mrs. Richie's house, in Old Chester," she said laughing.
"What are you talking about!"
"Why, father," she said blankly; his irritation was very disconcerting.
"I tell you I never heard of such a person!" he repeated sharply; and then realized what he had done. "Damn it, what did I lie for?" he said to himself, angrily; and he began to try to get out of it: "Old Chester? Oh, yes; I do remember. It's somewhere near Mercer, I believe. But I never went there in my life." Then he added in his own mind, "Confound it, I've done it again! What the devil has happened? Who has told her?" Aloud, he asked where she had heard of Old Chester.
She began to tell him about a little boy, who said—"it was too funny!" she interrupted herself, smiling—"who said thatyouwere 'Mrs. Richie's brother,' and you stayed at her house in Old Chester, and—"
"Perfect nonsense!" he broke in. "He mistook me for some one else, I suppose."
"Oh, of course," she agreed, laughing; upon which Mr. Pryor changed the subject by saying that he must look over some papers. "Don't talk now, dear," he said.
Alice subsided into her novel; but after a while she put the book down. No; the little boy had not mistaken him for somebody else; "he's Mr. Pryor," the child had said. But, of course, the rest was all a funny mistake. She took the book up again, but as she read, she began to frown. Old Chester: Where had she heard of Old Chester? Then she remembered. A gentleman who came to call,—King? Yes; that was his name; Dr. King. He said he had come from Old Chester. And he had spoken of somebody—now, who was it? Oh, yes, Richie; Mrs. Richie. And once last spring when her father went to Mercer he said he was going to Old Chester; yet now he said he had never heard of the place.—Why! it almost seemed as if she had blundered upon a secret! Her uneasy smile faded involuntarily into delicate disgust; not because the nature of the secret occurred to her, but because secrecy in itself was repugnant to her, as it is to all nobler minds. She said to herself, quickly, that her father had forgotten Old Chester, that was all. Of course, he had forgotten it!—or else—She did not allow herself to reach the alternative which his confusion so inevitably suggested:—secrecy, protected by a lie. In the recoil from it she was plunged into remorse for a suspicion which she had not even entertained. Truth was so much to this young creature, that even the shadow of an untruth gave her a sense of uneasiness which she could not banish. She looked furtively at her father, sorting out some papers, his lips compressed, his eyebrows drawn into a heavy frown, and assured herself that she was a wicked girl to have wondered, even for a minute, whether he was perfectly frank. He! Her ideal of every virtue! And besides, why should he not be frank? It was absurd as well as wicked to have that uneasy feeling. "I am ashamed of myself!" she declared hotly, and took up her novel….
But David had thrown the smooth stone from the brook!
It was a very little stone; the giant did not know for many a day where he had been hit; yet it had struck him in the one vulnerable point in his armor—his daughter's trust in him. How the wound widened does not belong to this story.
When Dr. Lavendar came bustling back with his tickets, David was absorbed in thought. He had very little to say on the long day's journey over the mountains. When they reached Mercer where they were to spend the night, he had nothing whatever to say: his eyes were closing with fatigue, and he was asleep almost before his little yellow head touched the pillow. In the morning he asked a question:
"Is it a Aunt if you don't know it?" "What?" said Dr. Lavendar, winding his clean stock carefully around his neck.
But David relapsed into silence. He asked so few questions that day that crutches for lame ducks were referred to only once.
They took the afternoon stage for Old Chester. It was a blue, delicious October day, David sat on the front seat between Dr. Lavendar and Jonas, and as Jonas told them all that had happened during their long absence, the child felt a reviving interest in life. Dr. Lavendar's humming broke out into singing; he sang scraps of songs and hymns, and teased David about being sleepy. "I believe he's lost his tongue, Jonas; he hasn't said boo! since we left Mercer. I suppose he won't have a thing to tell Mrs. Richie, not a thing!"
"Well, now, there!" said Jonas, "her George gimme a letter for you, and I'll be kicked if I ain't forgot it!" He thrust his left leg out, so that his cow-hide boot hung over the dashboard, and fumbled in his pocket; then thrust out the right leg and fumbled in another pocket; then dived into two or three coat pockets; finally a very crumpled note, smelling of the stable, came up from the depths and was handed to Dr. Lavendar.
"Slow down these two-forties on a plank road, Jonas, till I get my glasses on." said Dr. Lavendar.
After he read the letter he did not sing any more; his face fell into deeply puzzled lines. "I must ask Willy what it's all about," he said to himself. Certainly the note did not explain itself:
"DEAR DR. LAVENDAR: If it will not inconvenience you, will you let David stay at the rectory tonight?—and perhaps for a few days longer. I am not sure whether I shall be able to keep him. I may have to give him back to you. Will you let him stay with you until I can decide what to do?
"I wonder if that brother has interfered?" thought Dr. Lavendar. "Something has happened; that's evident. Keep him? Well, I guess I will!" He looked down at David, his old eyes beaming with pleasure. "Mrs. Richie wants you to stay with me tonight; what do you think of that?"
"I wanted to see the rabbits," said David; "but I don't mind staying—very much."
"Perhaps she feels that it would be better for David to be-in different surroundings."
"But Willy! Wednesday night she told me that I must be sure and bring him back to her on Saturday. What has happened between Wednesday and Saturday?"
"Very likely nothing has happened between Wednesday and Saturday. 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 Willy 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 pass before Helena made any effort to explain.And meantime Dr. Lavendar's mind was full of something else: oldBenjamin 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 nigger,' 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 damned 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 damned 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 nigger wouldn't. If He would, I'd as lief go to hell 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 muffled 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 God, who gave it," said Dr. Lavendar.
There was another silence; until he wakened to say, brightly, "Simmons, you freckled nigger, 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?"
Samuel Wright nodded; he could not speak at first, and Simmons lifting his head, looked at him, fiercely; then he swallowed several times, and said, with ponderous dignity: "Certainly, father. Certainly." And Simmons fell back into the shadows.
"Of course," murmured Benjamin Wright, "if I g-get well, it needn't hold, you know."
After that he seemed to sleep a little, until, his eyes still closed, he said, "The boy slapped my face. So it's all right."
Samuel started up from his chair at the bedside, shocked and protesting.
"Gad-a-mercy!" said Benjamin Wright, fretfully, opening his eye and looking at him—"that makes us square! Don't you see?"
There was a long silence. Once Dr. Lavendar spoke to him, and once William King touched his wrist, but he seemed to sleep. Then abruptly, and quite clearly, he spoke:
"'Crito, I owe a cock to Aesculapius'…. Lavendar?"
"Yes, Benjamin?"
"The debt is paid. Hey? I got the receipt."
"He is wandering," said Samuel. "Father, what do you want?"
But he did not speak again.
Helena had asked Dr. Lavendar to keep David, out of abject fear of William King. The doctor had granted her until Sunday to give him up without explanations; if she had not done so then, he must, he said doggedly, "tell." In sending the child to the Rectory she had not given him up; she had only declared a truce. She had tied Dr. King's hands and gained a breathing-space in which to decide what she must do; but she used to watch the hill road every morning, with scared eyes, lest he should stop on his way up to Benjamin Wright's to say that the truce was over. David came running joyously home two or three times, for more clothes, or to see the rabbits, or to hang about her neck and tell her of his journey. Upon one of these occasions, he mentioned casually that "Alice had gone travelling." Helena's heart stood still; then beat suffocatingly in her throat while she drew the story piecemeal from the child's lips.
"She said," David babbled, "that he didn't know you. An' she said—"
"And where was he—Mr. Pryor, all this time?" she demanded, breathlessly. She opened and shut her hands, and drew in her breath, wincing as if in physical pain; across all the days since that meeting of the Innocents, she felt his anger flaying her for the contretemps. It brought home to her, with an aching sense of finality the completeness of the break between them. But it did more than that. Even while she cringed with personal dismay, she was groping blindly towards a deeper and diviner despair: Those two young creatures were the cherubims at the east of the garden, bearing the sword that turned every way! By the unsparing light of that flashing blade the two sinners, standing outside, saw each other; but the one, at least, began to see something else: the glory of the garden upon which, thirteen years ago, she had turned her back! …
Helena did not ask any more questions. David, lounging against her knee, chattered on, ending with a candid and uncomplimentary reference to Mr. Pryor; but she did not reprove him. When, having, as it were, displayed his sling and his bag of pebbles, he was ready to run joyously back to the other home, she kissed him silently and with a strange new consciousness of the everlasting difference between them. But that did not lessen her passionate determination that William King should never steal him from her! Yet how could she defeat her enemy?
A week passed, and still undecided, she wrote to Dr. Lavendar asking further hospitality for David: "I want to have him with me always, but just now I am a little uncertain whether I can do so, because I am going to leave Old Chester. I will come and ask you about it in a few days."
She took the note out to the stable to George and bade him carry it to the Rectory; as she went back to the empty house, she had a glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Smith's jewel-like eyes gleaming redly upon her from the gloom of the rabbit-hutch, and a desolate longing for David made her hurry indoors. But there the silence, unbroken by the child's voice, was unendurable; it seemed to turn the confusion of her thoughts into actual noise. So she went out again to pace up and down the little brick paths between the box borders of the garden. The morning was still and warm; the frost of a sharp night had melted into threads of mist that beaded the edges of blackened leaves and glittered on the brown stems of withered annuals. Once she stopped to pull up some weed that showed itself still green and arrogant, spilling its seeds from yellowing pods among the frosted flowers; and once she picked, and put into the bosom of her dress, a little belated monthly rose, warm and pink at the heart, but with blighted outer petals. She found it impossible to pursue any one line of thought to its logical outcome; her mind flew like a shuttlecock between a dozen plans for William King's defeat. "Oh, I must decide on something!" she thought, desperately. But the futile morning passed without decision. After dinner she went resolutely into the parlor, and sitting down on her little low chair, pressed her fingers over her eyes to shut out any possible distractions. "Now," she said, "I will make up my mind."
A bluebottle fly buzzing up and down the window dropped on the sill, then began to buzz again. Through the Venetian blinds the sunshine fell in bars across the carpet; she opened her eyes and watched its silent movement,—so intangible, so irresistible; the nearest line touched her foot; her skirt; climbed to her listless hands; out in the hall the clock slowly struck three; her thoughts blurred and ran together; her very fears seemed to sink into space and time and silence. The sunshine passed over her lap, resting warm upon her bosom; up and up, until, suddenly, like a hot finger, it touched her face. That roused her; she got up, sighing, and rubbing her eyes as if she had been asleep. No decision! …
Suppose she should go down into the orchard? Away from the house, she might be better able to put her mind on it. She knew a spot where, hidden from curious eyes, she could lie at full length in the grass, warm on a western slope. David might have found her, but no one else would think of looking for her there…. When she sank down on the ground and clasped her hands under her head, her eyes were level with the late-blossoming grass that stirred a little in an unfelt breath of air; two frosted stalks of goldenrod, nodded and swung back and nodded again, between her and the sky. With absent intentness, she watched an ant creeping carefully to the top of a head of timothy, then jolting off at some jar she could not feel. The sun poured full upon her face; there was not a cloud anywhere in the unfathomable blue stillness. Thought seemed to drown in seas of light, and personality dwindled until her pain and fright did not seem to belong to her. She had to close her eyes to shut herself into her own dark consciousness:
How should she keep her child?
The simplicity of immediate flight she had, of course, long ago abandoned; it would only postpone the struggle with William King. That inflexible face of duty would hunt her down wherever she was, and take the child from her. No; there was but one thing to do: parry his threat of confessing to Dr. Lavendar that he had "made a mistake" in advising that David should be given to her, by a confession of her own, a confession which should admit the doctor's change of mind without mentioning its cause, and at the same time hold such promises for the future that the old minister would say that she might have David. Then she could turn upon her enemy with the triumphant declaration that she had forestalled him; that she had said exactly what he had threatened to say,—no more, no less. And yet the child was hers! But as she tried to plan how she should put it, the idea eluded her. She would tell Dr. Lavendar thus and so: but even as she marshalled her words, that scene in the waiting-room of the railroad station ached in her imagination. Alice's ignorance of her existence became an insult; what she was going to say to Dr. Lavendar turned into a denunciation of Lloyd Pryor; he was vile, and cruel, and contemptible! But these words stumbled, too. Back in her mind, common sense agreed to Lloyd's silence to his daughter; and, suddenly, to her amazement, she knew that she agreed, not only to the silence, but to his objection to marrying her. It would be an offence for her to live with Alice! Marriage, which would have quitted this new tormenting sense of responsibility and made her like other people, would not have lessened that offence. It came over her with still more acute surprise, that she had never felt this before. It was as if that fire of shame which had consumed her vanity the night she had confessed to William King, had brought illumination as well as burning. By its glare she saw that such a secret as she and Lloyd held between them would be intolerable in the presence of that young girl. Lloyd had felt it—here she tingled all over:—Lloyd was more sensitive than she! Ah, well; Alice was his own daughter, and he knew how almost fanatical she was about truth; so he was especially sensitive. But Dr. King? He had felt it about David: "whether you married this man or not would make no difference about David." She thought about this for awhile in heavy perplexity.
Then with a start she came back again to what she must say to Dr. Lavendar: "I will promise to bring David up just as he wishes; and I will tell him about my money; he doesn't know how rich I am; he will feel that he has no right to rob David of such a chance. And I will say that nobody could love him as I can." Love him! Had she not given up everything for him, sacrificed everything to keep him? For his sake she had not married! In this rush of self-approval she sat up, and looked blindly off over the orchard below her at the distant hills, blue and slumberous in the sunshine. Then she leaned her head in her hands and stared fixedly at a clump of clover, green still in the yellowing stubble…. She had chosen her child instead of a convention which, less than a month ago, she had so passionately desired; a month ago it seemed to her that, once married, she could do no more harm, have no more shame. Yet she had given all this up for David! … Suddenly she spurred her mind back to that talk with Dr. Lavendar: she would promise—anything! And planning her promises, she sat there, gazing with intent, unseeing eyes at the clover, until the chilly twilight drove her into the house.
It was not until Saturday that she dared to go to the Rectory. It was early in the afternoon, just as the Collect Class was gathering in the dining-room. She had forgotten it, she told Mary, as she closed her umbrella on the door-step. "Can I wait in the study?" she asked, uncertainly;—there was time to go back! The task of telling part of the truth to this mild old man, whose eye was like a sword, suddenly daunted her. She would wait a few days.—she began to open her umbrella, her fingers blundering with haste,—but retreat was cut off: Dr. Lavendar, on his way to the dining-room, with Danny at his heels, saw her; she could not escape!
"Why, Mrs. Richie!" he said, smiling at her over his spectacles. "Hi,David, who do you suppose is here? Mrs. Richie!"
David came running out of the dining-room; "Did you bring my slag?" he demanded.
And she had to confess that she had not thought of it; "You didn't tell me you wanted it, dear," she defended herself, nervously.
"Oh, well," said David, "I'm coming home to-morrow, and I'll get it."
"Would you like to come home?" she could not help saying.
"I'd just as lieves," said David.
"Run back," Dr. Lavendar commanded, "and tell the children I'm coming in a minute. Tell Theophilus Bell not to play Indian under the table. Now, Mrs. Richie, what shall we do? Do you mind coming in and hearing them say their Collect? Or would you rather wait in the study? We shall be through in three-quarters of an hour. David shall bring you some jumbles and apples. I suppose you are going to carry him off?" Dr. Lavendar said, ruefully.
"Oh," she faltered in a sudden panic, "I will come some other time," but somehow or other, before she knew it, she was in the dining-room; very likely it was because she would not loosen the clasp of David's little warm careless hand, and so her reluctant feet followed him in his hurry to admonish Theophilus. When she entered, instant silence fell upon the children. Lydia Wright, stumbling through the catechism to Ellen Dale [Illustration: "Dr. Lavendar," said Helena, "in regard to David."] who held the prayer-book and prompted, let her voice trail off and her mouth remain open at the sight of a visitor; Theophilus Bell rubbed his sleeve over some chalk-marks on the blackboard;—"I am drawing a woman with an umbrella," he had announced, condescendingly; "I saw her coming up the path,"—but when he saw her sitting down by Dr. Lavendar, Theophilus skulked to his seat, and read his Collect ever with unheeding attention.
Then the business of the afternoon began, and Helena sat and listened to it. It was a scene which had repeated itself for two generations in Old Chester; the fathers and mothers of these little people had sat on these same narrow benches without backs, and looked at the blackboard where Dr. Lavendar wrote out the divisions of the Collect, and then looked at the sideboard, where stood a dish of apples and another of jumbles. They, too, had said their catechism, announcing, in singsong chorus that they heartily thanked their Heavenly Father that He had called them to this state of salvation; and Dr. Lavendar had asked one or another of them, as he now asked their children, "What meanest thou by this word Sacrament?" "What is the inward and spiritual grace?" That afternoon, when he swooped down on David, Helen squeezed her hands together with anxiety; did he know what was the inward and spiritual grace? Could he say it? She held her breath until he had sailed triumphantly through:
"A death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness,"and so on. When he had finished, she looked proudly at Dr. Lavendar, who, to her astonishment, did not bestow a single word of praise!
"And yet," said Helena to herself, "he said it better than any of them, and he is the youngest!—David said it very well, didn't he?" she ventured, in a whisper.
Dr. Lavendar made no answer, but opened a book; on which there was a cheerful shuffling as the children jostled each other in their efforts to kneel down in the space between the benches; when all was still, Dr. Lavendar repeated the Collect. Helena dropped her face in her hands, and listened:
"Grant, we beseech Thee, merciful Lord, to Thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve Thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord."
"Amen!"said the children, joyfully; and, scrambling to their feet, looked politely at the sideboard. David, who played host on these occasions, made haste to poke the apples at Mrs. Richie, who could not help whispering to him to pull his collar straight; and she even pushed his hair back a little from his forehead. The sense of possession came over her like a wave, and with it a pang of terror that made her lips dry; at that moment she knew the taste of fear in her mouth. When Dr. Lavendar spoke to her, she was unable to reply.
"Well, now, Mrs. Richie," he said, "I expect these little people can eat their apples without us; can't you, chickabiddies?"
"Yes, sir!" said the children, in eager chorus, eying the apples.
"You and I will go into the study for a while," said Dr. Lavendar.
She followed him speechlessly…the time had come.
Dr. Lavendar, hospitable and fussy, drew up a horsehair-covered chair with ears on each side of the back, and bade her sit down; then he poked the fire, and put on a big lump of coal, and asked her if she was sure she was warm enough? "It's pretty chilly; we didn't have weather as cold as this in October when I was your age."
"Dr. Lavendar," said Helena;—and at the tremor in her voice he looked at her quickly, and then looked away;—"in regard to David—"
"Yes; I understand that you are not sure that you want to keep him?"
"Oh, no! I am sure. Entirely sure!" She paused, uncertain what to say next. Dr. Lavendar gave her no assistance. Her breath caught in an unsteady laugh. "You are not smoking, Dr. Lavendar! Do light your pipe. I am quite used to tobacco smoke, I assure you."
"No," said Dr. Lavendar, quietly; "I will not smoke now."
"In regard to David," she began; and gripped her hands tight together, for she saw with dismay that they were shaking. She had an instant of angry surprise at her own body. It was betraying her to the silent, watching old man on the other side of the fire. "I want him; but I mean to leave Old Chester. Would you be willing to let me take him away?"
"Why," said Dr. Lavendar, "we shall be very sorry to have you leave us; and, of course, I shall be sorry to lose David. Very sorry! I shall feel," said Dr. Lavendar, with a rueful chuckle, "as if I had lost a tooth! That is about as omnipresent sense of loss as a human critter can have. But I can't see that that is any reason for not letting you take him."
"You are very kind," she murmured.
"Where are you going, and when do you go?" he asked, easily; but he glanced at those shaking hands.
"I want to go next week. I—oh, Dr. Lavendar! I want David; I am surenobody can do more for him than I can. Nobody can love him as I do! AndI think he would be pretty homesick for me, too, if I did not take him.But—"
"Yes?"
She tried to smile; then spread her handkerchief on her knee, and folded it over and over with elaborate self-control. "Dr. King thinks—I ought not to have him. He says," she stopped; the effort to repeat William King's exact words drove the color out of her face. "He says he made a mistake in advising you to give David to me. He thinks—"
she caught her breath with a gasp;—"I am not to be trusted to—to bring him up." She trembled with relief; the worst was over. She had kept her promise, to the letter. Now she would begin to fight for her child: "You will let me have him? You will!—Please say you will, Dr. Lavendar!"
"Why does Dr. King think you are not to be trusted?" said Dr. Lavendar.
"Because," she said, gathering up all her courage, "he thinks that I—that David ought to be brought up by some one more—more religious, I suppose, than I am. I know I'm not very religious. Not as good as everybody in Old Chester; but I will bring him up just as you want me to! Any way at all you want me to. I will go to church regularly; truly I will, Dr. Lavendar; truly!"
Dr. Lavendar was silent. The lump of coal in the grate suddenly split and fell apart; there was a crackling leap of flames, and from between the bars a spurt of bubbling gas sent a whiff of acrid smoke puffing out into the room.
"You will let me have him, won't you? You said you would! If you take him away from me—"
"Well?"
She looked at him dumbly; her chin shook.
"The care of a child is sometimes a great burden; have you considered that?"
"Nothing would be a burden if I did it for David!"
"It might involve much sacrifice."
"I have sacrificed everything for him!" she burst out.
"What?"
"There was something," she said evasively, "that I wanted to do very much; something that would have made me—happier. But I couldn't if I kept David; so I gave it up."
Dr. Lavendar ruminated. "You wanted David the most?"
"Yes?" she said passionately.
"Then it was a choice, not a sacrifice, wasn't it, my dear? No doubt you would make sacrifices for him, only in this matter you chose what you wanted most, And your choice was for your own happiness I take it,—not his?"
She nodded doubtfully, baffled for a minute, and not quite understanding. Then she said, "But I would choose his happiness; I have done some things for him, truly I have. Oh, little things, I suppose you would call them; but I wasn't used to them and they seemed great to me. But I would choose his happiness, Dr. Lavendar. So you will let me keep him?"