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 sure
nobody can do more for him than I can. Nobody can love him as I do! And
I 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?"
"If you think you ought to have him, you may."
"No matter what Dr. King says?"
"No matter what Dr. King says. If you are sure that it is best for him
to be with you, I, at least, shall not interfere."
Her relief was so great that the tears ran down her face. "It is best!"
"Best to be with you," Dr. Lavendar repeated thoughtfully; "Why, Mrs.
Richie?"
"Why? Why because I want him so much, I have nothing in the whole
world, Dr. Lavendar, but David. Nothing."
"Other folks might want him."
"But nobody can do as much for him as I can! I have a good deal of
money."
"You mean you can feed him, and clothe him, and educate him? Well; I
could do that myself. What else can you do?"
"What else?"
"Yes. One person can give him material care about as well as another.
What else can you do?"
"Why--" she began, helplessly; "I don't think I know just what you
mean?"
"My friend," said Dr. Lavendar, "are you a good woman?"
The shock of the question left her speechless. She tried to meet his
eye; quailed, half rose: "I don't know what you mean! What right have
you to ask me such a question--"
Dr. Lavendar waited.
"Perhaps I don't think about things, quite as you do. I am not
religious; I told you that. I don't do things because of religion; I
believe in--in reason, not in religion. I try to be good in--my way. I
don't know that I've been what you would call 'good.'"
"What do I call 'good'?"
At which she burst out that people in Old Chester thought that people
who did not live according to convention were not good. For her part,
convention was the last thing she thought of. Indeed, she believed
there was more wickedness in convention than out of it! "If I have done
anything you would call wrong, it was because I couldn't help it; I
never wanted to do wrong. I just wanted to be happy. I've tried to be
charitable. And I've tried to be good--in my way; but not because I
wanted to go to heaven, and all that. I--I don't believe in heaven,"
she ended with terrified flippancy.
"Perhaps not," said Dr. Lavendar sadly; "but, oh, my child, how you do
believe in hell!"
She stared at him for one broken moment; then flung her arms out on the
table beside her, and dropped her head upon them. Dr. Lavendar did not
speak, There was a long silence, suddenly she turned upon him, her face
quivering; "Yes! I do believe in hell. Because that is what life is!
I've never had any happiness at all. Oh, it seemed so little a thing to
ask--just to be happy Yes, I believe in hell."
Dr. Lavendar waited.
"If I've done what people say isn't right, it was only because I wanted
to be happy; not because I wanted to do wrong. It was because of Love.
You can't understand what that means! But Christ said that because a
woman loved much, much was to be forgiven! Do you remember that?" she
demanded hotly.
"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar; "but do you remember Who it was that she
loved much? She loved Goodness, Mrs. Richie. Have you loved Goodness?"
"Oh, what is the use of talking about it?" she said passionately; "we
won't agree. If it was all to do over again, perhaps I--But life was so
dreadful! If you judge me, remember--"
"I do not judge you."
"--remember that everything has been against me. Everything! From the
very beginning, I never had anything I wanted, I thought I was going to
be happy, but each time I wasn't. Until I had David. And now you will
take him. Oh, what a miserable failure life has been! I wish I could
die. But it seems you can't even die when you want to!"
For a moment she covered her face with her hands. Then she said: "I
suppose I might as well tell you. Mr. Pryor is not--.... After my baby
died, I left my husband. Lloyd loved me, and I went to live with him."
"You went to live with your brother?" Dr. Lavendar repeated perplexed.
"He is not my brother."
There was silence for a full minute. Then Dr. Lavendar said quietly,
"Go on."
She looked at him with hunted eyes. "Now, you will take David away. Why
did you make me tell you?"
"It is better to tell me." He laid his old hand on hers, clenched upon
the table at her side. The room was very still; once a coal fell from
the grate, and once there was the soft brush of rain against the window.
"It's my whole life. I can't tell you my whole life, I didn't even want
to be wicked; all I wanted was to be happy, And so I went to Lloyd. It
didn't seem so very wrong. We didn't hurt anybody. His wife was
dead.--As for Frederick, I have no regrets!" she ended fiercely.
The room had darkened in the rainy October twilight, and the fire was
low; Dr. Lavendar could hardly see her quivering face.
"But now it's all over between Lloyd and me. I sha'n't see him ever any
more. He would have married me, if I had been willing to give up David.
But I was not willing."
"You thought it would make everything right if you married this man?"
"Right?" she repeated, surprised; "why, of course. At least I suppose
that is what good people call right," she added dully.
"And you gave up doing right, to have David?"
She felt that she was trapped, and yet she could not understand why; "I
sacrificed myself," she said confusedly.
"No," said Dr. Lavendar; "you sacrificed a conviction. A poor, false
conviction, but such as it was, you threw it over to keep David."
She looked at him in terror; "It was just selfishness, you think?"
"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar.
"Perhaps it was," she admitted. "Oh, how frightful life is! To try to
be happy, is to be bad."
"No, to try to be happy at the expense of other people, is to be bad."
"But I never did that! Lloyd's wife was dead;--Of course, if she had
been alive"--Helena lifted her head with the curious pride of caste in
sin which is so strongly felt by the woman who is a sinner;--"if she
had been alive, I wouldn't have thought of such a thing. But nobody
knew, so I never did any harm,"--then she quailed; "at least, I never
meant to do any harm. So you can't say it was at anybody's expense."
"It was at everybody's expense. Marriage is what makes us civilized. If
anybody injures marriage we all pay."
She was silent.
"If every dissatisfied wife should do what you did, could decent life
go on? Wouldn't we all drop down a little nearer the animals?"
"Perhaps so," she said vaguely. But she was not following him. She had
entered into this experience of sin, not by the door of reason, but of
emotion; she could leave it only by the same door. The high appeal to
individual renunciation for the good of the many, was entirely beyond
her. Dr. Lavendar did not press it any further.
"Well, anyhow," she said dully, "I didn't get any happiness--whether it
was at other people's expense or not. When David came, I thought, 'now
I am going to be happy!' That was all I wanted: happiness. And now you
will take him away."
"I have not said I would take him away."
She trembled so at that, that for an instant she could not speak. "Not
take him?"
"Not if you think it is best for him to stay with you."
She began to pant with fear, "You mean something by that, I know you do
I Oh, what do you mean? I cannot do him any harm!"
"Woman," said Dr. Lavendar solemnly, "_can you do him any good_?"
She cowered silently away from him.
"Can you teach him to tell the truth, you, who have lived a lie? Can
you make him brave, you, who could not endure? Can you make him
honorable, you, who have deceived us all? Can you make him unselfish,
you, who have thought only of self? Can you teach him purity, you,
who--"
"Stop! I cannot bear it."
"Tell me the truth: can you do him any good?"
That last solemn word fell into profound silence. There was not a sound
in the still darkness of the study; and suddenly her soul was still,
too ... the whirlwind of anger had died out; the shock of
responsibility had subsided; the hiss of those flames of shame had
ceased. She was in the centre of all the tumults, where lies the quiet
mind of God. For a long time she did not speak. Then, by and by, her
face hidden in her arms on the table, she said, in a whisper:
"No."
_And after the fire, the still small Voice._