Chas Cooney was winking his keen eyes.
"He'd got clear--there was plenty of time.... One of the negro women was knocked over by a flying splinter.... Things were falling all around. So he stopped for her.... She wasn't hurt at all, when we pulled her out.... Of course Uncle Thornton was back in it all. A beam knocked him senseless...."
"Surgeon said it was instantaneous," came papa's shadowy voice. "Well.... It's on my head. I'm responsible. I know that."
And he sat down uncertainly, and somewhat pitifully, on the tall hall-chair....
Then nobody said anything more. There would never be anything more to say. Time would go on a long while yet, but no one would ever add another touch here. This was the end of the world.
He had trusted the Heths too far.
And how strange and void it was at the world's end, how deadly still but for the faint roarings of waters far off.
She was walking toward her father. Through the roaring there came a voice, so little and so remote.
"Papa, you must come up to bed.... I'll telephone for the doctor."
But she did not go to the telephone; not even to her father. She brushed her hand upward vaguely, fending away the advancing blackness. And then it would have been with her as with poor Miller that day at the Works, but that Charles Cooney, who had been watching her closely, was quick and strong.
In which to love much is to be much loved, and Kern's Dearest Dream (but one) comes True.
Beyond the Great Gulf, there was news coming, too: coming with the click of hoofs on cobble-stones, and the harsh clanging of a wagon; seeping and spreading through the shabby street with mysterious velocity. Windows rattled up; a word flew from lip to lip; people were running.
There came the Reverend George Dayne, of the Charities, and hard behind him Labor Commissoner O'Neill, mopping his face as he ran. These two were known to the neighborhood, with their right of going in, and no questions asked. Out again came the ambulance surgeon, shaking his head jauntily at all inquiries. Out lastly, after an interval, issued Mr. Pond, and disappeared into the establishment of Henry Bloom, who was known to have loaned his camp-chairs free, the day Doctor got up this here Settlement....
Then stillness enveloped all. Nothing seemed to stir. And no one could remember when he had seen those windows dark before.
Within, upstairs, the two men, alike only in this one tie, stood about, waiting; waiting for Pond's return; waiting only because they were loath to go. What little had been for their hands to do was done now.
The men of the yellow wagon, breathing hard as they came up the steps, had sought out the bedroom. But Mr. Dayne said that a soldier should lie in his tent. So they had made sure that the three-legged lounge in the office was steady, and got a fresh counterpane from red-lidded Mrs. Garland. Then, when Pond was gone, the other two had thought to make ready against the arrival of Bloom. However, they were soon brought to pause here, finding nothing to make ready with. There was an overcoat hung in the clothes closet, but otherwise it was entirely bare; hangers dangling empty. The men had found the sight somewhat sad.
But Mr. Dayne, who had been a parson before he was a Secretary, had said no matter. Let him go in his patches upon his great adventure....
It had seemed natural to these two to be doing the last small services. There was no family here; friends' love was needed. But now there was only waiting....
Mr. Dayne, in Canal Street in his own business, had been at the Heth Works in the first uproar. At intervals, he had told the story to the others: a story of one machine too many unloaded on a strained floor; of a dry beam breaking with a report like a cannon; of men and women stampeding in the wild fear that the building was about to collapse. On the second floor, but two had kept their heads; and the young doctor, for all his bad foot, had been the quicker. It was supposed that the base of the machine itself had struck him, glancing. Mr. Heth, found two feet away, was buried by a litter of débris; his escape from death was deemed miraculous. And when they brought him round, it was told that his first word had been: "Vivian hurt?..."
Much remained puzzling: in chief the strange amiability of the master of the Works toward the man he had once threatened to break for libel. They had stood there chatting like friends, laughing.
But here Commissioner O'Neill could give little light. Last night his friend had told him, indeed, with evidences of strange happiness, that there was to be a new Heth Works at once. But he was mysteriously reserved as to how this triumph for the O'Neill administration had been brought to pass, saying repeatedly: "It's a sort of secret. I can't tell you that, old fellow." But O'Neill remembered now one thing he had said, with quite an excited air, which might be a sort of clue: "Don't you get it, Sam?... It's all good. Everybody's good ... Why, I've known it all the time."...
Now the two men had fallen silent. They were in the old waiting-room, with the office door fast shut between. Royalty had slept in this room once. It was decaying now, and bare as your hand but for the row of kitchen chairs along the wall. The minister kept walking about; kept humming beneath his breath. Once Sam O'Neill caught a line of that song:The victory of life is won.A strange sentiment at this time certainly; thoroughly clerical, though. It was a professional matter with Dayne; only he, O'Neill, had been really close to V.V. And he was continually burdened with a certain sense of personal responsibility for it all....
"I'd like to have the doctor for that little girl in there," said Mr. Dayne.
The Commissioner, who was getting really stout these days, cleared his throat.
"How's she goin' to get on without him?"
"Ah, how?" said the clergyman, musing.
The stillness was like the silence before the dawn. Oppressive, too, was the sense of emptiness. Two men in this chamber; one small watcher beyond the door; otherwise emptiness, sensed through all the two hundred rooms of the deserted pile. Life died from the world. People forgot. Stillness, death, loneliness, and destitution. They had picked him to the bone, and left him....
And then, as thoughts like these saddened the thoughts of the two men, there was heard as it were the whir of wings in his old hotel. And the crows came.
I say the crows came. They came in their own way; but so they had always come. Came in the guise of an elderly tramp, vacant-eyed and straggly-bearded, soiled, tentative, and reluctant. But what mattered things like this: since in his wings, which were only hairy arms that needed soap, he brought the raiment? Such a pile of them, too, such royal abundance. A fine black cutaway coat, a handsome pair of "extra" trousers, shirts, and shoes, and, peeping beneath all, glimpses of a pretty blue suit quite obviously as good as new.
There stood the wonder, silent and uncouth, in the doorway. Do you doubt that Sam O'Neill and Mr. Dayne knew, the moment their eyes saw, that here were the crows come? How they gazed and gazed, and how poor Mister Garland, ever retiring of habit, squirmed and shifted over an uneasy heart....
He did not care to talk with gentlemen, did not Mister; gentlemen of that cloth particularly. Doubt not that in institutions men wearing such vests as this had had their cleanly will of him on winter nights. So he asked his question dumbly, with a movement of matted head and eyebrow; and when Mr. Dayne answered in a curious voice, "Yes ... he's gone," the last expectancy faded from the rough vague face. He sidled in, timid and unwilling; laid his burden, speechless, upon a chair. And then he was shambling furtively out the door again, when the parson's hand took his shoulder.
"Why are you bringing them back now? He gave them all to you, didn't he?"
The visitor spoke for the first time, suddenly, low and whining.
"'S a Gawd's truth, Reverend, I never hooked nothin' off him, an' I was goin' to bring 'em back anyways. Nothin' wore at all, gents, you can see yourself, cep a time or two mebbe outen that there derby...."
The man himself could see no point in it all except that gents had him in charge; a threatening predicament. But Mr. Dayne's gentle suasion prevailed. Out, gradually, came the little story which he was to tell sometimes in after years, and think about oftener....
Mister was bringing back Doctor's things because he had never felt right about taking them.
The cutaway coat had been the beginning of it all, it seemed. The gift of so fine a Sunday coat had bewildered the recipient; he had been on the point of handing it back right there. However, nature had conquered, then and subsequently; there had accumulated a collection of clothing secretly laid away in a place he had. The man had kept asking, he said, out of habit--"more jest to see if he'd give 'em to yer like." But he seemed to feel, in a certain dim way, that there was a sort of contest on between him and Doctor.
"The innercent look he had to him, yer might say," he said, groping for words to answer the high-vested inquisitor. "Like a child like. Never scolded yer wunst.... Just up and give yer all yer wanted...."
The blue suit, given yesterday, seemed to have been conceived as a kind of test case. The man appeared to feel that, once refused, a sort of spell on him would be broken; he would then get out all his store and wear them freely. So he had told a tall story in the office: how he was surely going to settle down and be respectable this time, and was obliged to have him a good nice suit fer to git started in.... And Doctor had given him such a funny look that for a minute he thought sure he had him. But no, the young man had laughed suddenly, as at a joke, and said: "Well, you sit there, Mister, till I take these off...." Only not to tell Mrs. Garland. Took him right back, sure did....
"So then I thinks," said Mister, the professional quaver returning to his voice, "it's no better'n thievin' for to take off an innercent like him, and thinks I, I'll git the lot of 'em, and give him like a surprise. 'S a Gawd's truth, gents, like I'm tellin' yer. Nothin' at all wore but mebbe that there derby, like I up and tole yer...."
His word had never been doubted: this passed invention. And he was thanked, not chidden for his narrative, and Reverend said:
"He shall wear that suit for his burial...."
So the crows flitted out of the door again, their errand done; and behind them was a deeper stillness than they had found.
The old waiting-room, a little dark at best, grew dimmer. Sunlight faded from the ruined floor. The glorious afternoon was drawing in. The men did not speak. And then in the lengthening silence, there floated up small noises: a door creaking open; quiet feet upon the stairs; a faint swishing as of a skirt.
The parson was standing by the half-open door.
"D'you think, sir," he spoke suddenly aloud, "there's any way to preach to a man, like just being better than he is?"
O'Neill roused, but made no answer. He had been thinking of the day he had seen this fellow Garland dodging down the hall with those trousers there. Then, becoming aware of the footsteps, he said:
"Pond back ... Is it?"
But Mr. Dayne, looking out down the corridor, said no. After a pause, he added, in a yet lower voice:
"It's young Cooney, from the Works ... And a lady."
A change had gone over the parson's kind face, making it still kinder. His sense of surrounding desolation ebbed from him. People acknowledged their heavy debt; paid as stoutly as they could. On the stairs there he saw, coming, the daughter of the man whose negligence had taken to-day a young life not easily to be spared.
"They're both friends of mine," added Mr. Dayne, gently. "Perhaps you will excuse me a moment?"
And he stepped out into the hall, shutting the door quietly behind him.
So Mr. Dayne thought. But under the heavy veil she wore, this was less a daughter than a woman: Cally, who had loved for a day and in the evening heard that her love was dead.
The thought behind the venture had been Chas's. Nothing required him at the House of Heth; he was for getting his sister and going to see what help the Dabney House might need. And at the last minute, she had put on her hat again, and gone too. Nothing that Mr. Dayne had felt about the loneliness of this end could touch what Cally had felt. Of whom, too, was help more required than of her, now or never any more? So they had driven three from Saltman's to the old hotel, where she had thought to come to a meeting to-day. And then Henrietta, who had come out from her typewriter strong and white as ice, methodically sticking in hatpins as she crossed the sidewalk; Hen, the iron-hearted, had quite suddenly broken down; laying her cold face in Cally's lap, weeping wildly that she would not bear it....
So Cally must brave the stairs without her, must speak to who might be here. But she did not mind. Strength had come to her with the consciousness that had returned all too quickly: the dead strength of the inanimate. She was dark and cold within as the spaces between the worlds....
And now the two cousins met Mr. Dayne in this strange endless corridor; and knew that no services were asked of them.
They greeted with little speech. Mr. Dayne told of the simple dispositions they were making. Chas explained how Mr. Heth had tried to communicate with Mrs. Mason,--whom Mr. Dayne had quite overlooked, it seemed,--but found that she was out of town; had telegraphed; how he would have come down with them now, but had had to stop for the setting of his arm. Uncle Thornton would come this evening....
"Ah, that's kind of him," said Mr. Dayne. "He must be in much pain...."
Then silence fell. There seemed nothing to say or do. How think that she could serve--mitigate these numb horrors of pain and self-reproach? All was over.
"Where is he?" said Cally, her voice so little and calm.
The clergyman told her. And then all three stood looking down the corridor to the door at the end of it: a shut door marked in white letters: DR. VIVIAN.... But nothing could hurt her now.
"We thought that was right," said Mr. Dayne.... "Will you go in for a moment?"
Briefly the girl's veiled eyes met his. He was aware that a little tremor went through her; perhaps he then understood a little further. And he thought he had never seen anybody so beautiful and white.
He added in his comforting way: "There's no one at all with him except the little girl here, Corinne, that he was kind to...."
Surely there was never a loneliness like this loneliness.
"I will go, if I may," said Cally.
Chas was eyeing her, unbelievably grave, turning his hat between his hands. And then she remembered Hen, left alone, who would not be comforted.
She whispered: "Don't wait for me.... I'll come in a minute."
The young man hesitated; they spoke a moment; it was so arranged. Chas was tipping away from her down the well of the stairs.
And she and the clergyman were walking up the corridor, his hand at her elbow, to the door with the white letters on it.
As Mr. Dayne's hand touched the knob, she spoke again, very low.
"Is he.... Is he--much ...?"
"No," said Mr. Dayne, "the injuries were internal. There's hardly a mark...."
So, opening the door softly, he left her.
And she was within, the door a step or two behind her, in front a long space, drawn blinds, and the indistinguishable twilight. Somewhere before her was the mortal man who had pledged her one day that he would prove his friendship with his life.
And how came she here; by what right?
She had perceived remotely that she was not alone. Out of the dim great stretches there emerged advancing a little figure, black-clad; advancing silent, with lowered head. Drawing near, she did not look up, did not speak: she was merely fading from the room.
The figure was vaguely apprehended, as one upon another planet. But Cally, stirring slightly as she slipped past, made a movement with her hand and said, just audibly:
"Don't go."
The girl must have paused. There came a tiny voice:
"Yes, ma'am. I'll ... just step out." And then, yet fainter: "I was wishin' you'd come, ma'am."
It was the stillness of the world's last Sabbath. Gathering dusk was here, and mortal fear. Her limbs ran to marble. There came again the lifeless whisper.
"Don't be afraid, ma'am.... He looks so beautiful."
The understanding speech, the voice, seemed to penetrate her consciousness. Her eyes drew out of the dusk, turned upon the small figure at her side: the little girl he had been fond of, her father's three years' buncher. And then she heard herself breathing suddenly, faintly:
"Ah!... You poor, poor child!..."
And her heart, which had been quite dead, was suddenly alive and twisting within her....
She had been engulfed in her own abyss. Tragedy was on every side, horrors pouring in, swamping her being. Feeling had drowned in the icy void. Not Hen's tears had touched her, not her father's stricken grief. But when her eyes came upon this small face, something written there pierced her through and through. Such a shocking little face it was, so pinched with no hope of tears....
In the darkness of the shuttered office, two stood near who were worlds apart. And, for the first time since she had looked down from her window at home, Cally was lifted out of herself....
"I--you must let me see you--in a day or two, won't you?" she said hurriedly, below her breath. "I should like so much ... to help you, if I could...."
A quiver went over the little mask; but the girl spoke in the same stony way:
"Oh, ma'am ... it's so kind.... I'll go now."
But the hollowness of Cally's speech had mocked the sudden sympathy upwelling within her. Her arm was upon the work-girl's frail shoulder; her indistinct voice suddenly tremulous.
"Don't think I imagine that any one can ever replace.... You must know I understand ... what your loss is."
Kern shrunk against the wall by the door. No moment this, to speak of what had so long been hid.
"He was like a father to me, ma'am, an' more...."
And then, as if to prove that she claimed no right at all in this room, as if all depended on her establishing finally the humble and spiritual nature of her regard, she breathed what in happier days had been close to her heart:
"He was teaching me to be a lady...."
Who shall say how marvels befall, and the dearest dream comes true? Was it the pitifulness of the little hope laid bare? Or the secret shrinking behind that, but surprised at last? Or was it the knowledge of a beautiful delicacy shown by this little girl before to-day?
Miss Heth's arm was about her neck, and her voice, which was so pretty even when you could hardly hear it, said, true as true:
"I think you've been a lady all along, Co-rinne."
And then the bands about Kern's heart snapped, and she could cry....
The storm came suddenly, like the bursting of a dam. A bad time certainly; it was hard to be torn so, yet to make no cry or sound; in any case, distressing to others. And surely salt water couldn't be good for this lovely cloth, where her face lay....
Yet one doesn't think overmuch of things like that, when the barriers on the great common go toppling down. And there was Sisterhood there all the time....
And above the stillness and the racking, Kern heard his beautiful lady's voice once more, speaking to her own heart now, so low, oh, so broken:
"Ah, but he was teaching me...."
And then Kern must go quickly, lest she disgrace herself forever; screaming aloud as she had heard women who were not ladies....
The girl was gone, her head between her hands. And Cally Heth stood alone in the more than churchly stillness.
She was breaking up within. The drowned being stirred to life, with multiplying pains. And yet, in giving comfort, she had mysteriously taken it. There came to her a fortitude that was not of death.
No sound penetrated to the silent waiting-room.
The two men there spoke little. They had talked what they had to say. Sam O'Neill looked at his watch; it was twenty-five minutes to six. And, a moment later, Director Pond came up the steps, entered and said:
"Bloom will be here at six o'clock."
They spoke briefly of this. The friends of the neighborhood were to be admitted; it was agreed that this should be arranged for to-morrow morning. Pond then said:
"Is Miss Heth in there?"
Mr. Dayne said that she was. And Sam O'Neill, who had not known who the visitor was, first looked startled and then lapsed off into heavy musings....
The Director sat down on a chair by the door. His strong face looked tired.
"Won't you, a little later," he said to Mr. Dayne, "go down and say a few words to the people outside? They'd appreciate it."
The parson, biting his crisp mustache, said that he would.
Pond sat absently eyeing the pile of men's clothes beside him; and after a time he asked what they were there for. Mr. Dayne seemed less and less disposed for conversation. So it was Sam who told, in a somewhat halting fashion, of the coming of the crows....
Pond, whom no one could have taken for a sentimentalist, made no comment whatever. Presently he felt Mr. Dayne's eye upon him.
"Well, would it work out, do you think?"
The Director shook his head slightly, disclaiming authority. But after a time he said:
"Not as long as men'll try it only once every two thousand years."
The parson's eyes dreamed off.
"He believed in miracles. And so they were always happening to him.... Oh, it's all so simple when you stop to think."
Then there was silence and the creeping twilight. Sam O'Neill stood picking at a splotch on the ancient plaster, with strong, yellow-gloved hands. Mr. Dayne walked about, his arms crossed behind him. Upon Pond there came a sort of restlessness.
He said abruptly: "How long' has Miss Heth been here?"
"Oh--a--little while," said the parson, rousing.... "Long enough, no doubt."
The dark-eyed Director was standing. The two men exchanged a look; they seemed to feel each other. Here was a matter with which the Labor Commissioner had nothing to do.
"Well, then," said Pond, with a little intake of breath, "I'll go in."
The Director shut the door into the hall, took his hat from the chair. He crossed the bare waiting-room, and turned the knob of the frequented door into the office.
This door he opened, gently, just far enough to let himself in; he closed it at once behind him. Nevertheless, by the chance of their position, the other two saw, through the darkness of the room beyond, what was not meant for their eyes.
A simple scene, in all truth; none commoner in the world; it really did not matter who saw. Yet the two men in the waiting-room, beholding, turned away, and Sam O'Neill bit a groan through in the middle.
He had never understood his friend, but he had loved him in his way. Old memories twitched; his poise wavered. He lacked the parson's inner supports. He paced about for some time, making little noises in his throat. And then he tried his voice on a question.
"Did you ever hear him speak of John the Baptist?"
Mr. Dayne halted, and looked.
And Sam O'Neill, with some difficulty and in his own way, told of V.V.'s creed about the Huns. Of how he had maintained that they needed awakening, nothing else, and were always ready and waiting for it, no matter how little they themselves knew that. And, finally, how he had said one day--in a phrase that had been brought flashing back over the months--that if a man but called to such as these in the right voice, he could not hide himself where they would not come to him on their knees....
Mr. Dayne had stood listening with a half-mystical look, a man groping for elusive truths. Now his fine composure seemed to cloud for a moment; but it shone out again, fair and strong. And presently, as he paced, he was heard humming again his strange paradoxical song, which he, a parson, seemed to lean upon, as a wounded man leans on his friend.
Her spirit returned to her body from the far countries, not without some pain of juncture. But there was no strangeness now in being in this room; none in finding Mr. Pond at her side, his saddened gaze upon her. Happen what might, nothing any more would ever seem strange....
"Won't you come with me now?"
She stood, whispering: "Come with you?"
And Pond's strong heart turned a little when he saw her eyes, so circled, so dark with tears that were to come.
"Your cousins are waiting, aren't they?... And don't you think your father might need you?"
A little spasm distorted the lovely face, unveiled now.
She inclined her head. Pond walked away toward the door; stood there silently, drawing a finger over faded panels. Behind him was the absence of all sound: the wordlessness of partings that were final for this world....
She had seen in his great dignity the man who had given to the House of Heth the last full measure of his confidence. And it was as his little friend had said. He was beautiful with the best of all his looks; the look he had worn yesterday in the library, as he went to meet her poor father.
They had slain him, and yet he trusted.
No design of hers had led her alone beside this resting-place: that was chance, or it was God. But now it seemed that otherwise it would henceforward not have been bearable. For with this first near touch of death, there had come, strangely hand in hand, her first vision of the Internal. The look of this spirit was not toward time, and over the body of this death there had descended the robe of a more abundant Life.
So she turned quickly and came away....
She was outside now. The door was shut behind. And she was walking with Mr. Pond down the corridor, which was so long, echoing so emptily. She became aware that her knees were trembling. And Corinne's fear now was hers.
She desired to be at once where no one could see her. But at the head of the grand stairway, in the desolating loneliness, Mr. Pond stopped walking. And then he held a hand of hers between two of his; pressed it hard, released it.
He was speaking in a voice that seemed vaguely unlike his own.
"It's hard for you--for your father--for all of us down here. His life was needed ... wonderfully, for such a boy. And yet.... How could a man wish it better with himself? He wouldn't, that I'm sure of.... Gave away his life every day, and at the end flung it all out at once, to save a factory negro. Don't you know that if he'd lived a thousand years, he could never have put one touch to that?"
Cally said unsteadily: "I know that's true...."
She wished to go on; but the Director was speaking again, hurriedly:
"And you mustn't think that a blow on the head can bring it all to an end. If I know anything, his story will be often told. People that you and I will never know, will know of this, and it will help them--when their pinch comes. There's no measuring the value of a great example. When it strikes, you can feel the whole line lift...."
And then he added, in a let-down sort of way: "Freest man I ever saw."
There was no reply to make to these things. They went down the stairs together. Halfway down, the man spoke again:
"In the little while I've been here, I've seen and heard a great deal. Some day you must let me tell you--how much there is down here to keep his memory green."
The stairs were long. A kind of terror was growing within her. She would go to pieces before she reached the bottom. But that peril passed; and very near now was the waiting car, and merciful shelter....
They crossed, amid springing memories, the old court where, one rainy afternoon, there had happened what had turned her life thenceforward. Then they were safely through the door, and came out upon the portico, into the last light of the dying afternoon. And here, above all else that she felt, she encountered a dim surprise.
When she had passed this way a little while before, it was as if all power of feeling had been frozen in her. Sights and sounds were not for her. So now the sudden spectacle that met her eyes came as a large vague confusion.
The shabby street was black with people.
Her affliction had been so supremely personal, her sense of this man's tragic solitariness in the world so overwhelming, that she could not at once take in the meaning of what she saw. She must have faltered to a pause. And she heard Pond's voice, so strangely gentle:
"You see he was much loved here."
Her eyes went once over the dingy street, the memorable scene. Thought shook through her in poignant pictures.... Herself, one day, prostrated by calamity on calamity; and in the little island-circle where she had spent her life, not one heart that had taken her sorrow as its own. And beside that picture, this: a great company, men and women, old and young, silent beneath a window: and somewhere among them the sounds of persistent weeping....
And Cally seemed suddenly to see what had been hidden from her before. If he was much loved, it was because he had loved much.
Yet her confusion must have lingered. Was it so, indeed? Many, so many, to compensate his loneliness? It seemed to be important to understand clearly; and she turned her veiled face toward Pond, and spoke indistinctly:
"All these.... Are they all ... his friends?"
There sprang a light into the Director's hawk-eyes, changing his whole look wonderfully.
"They're his mother," he said, "and his brothers and his sisters...."