The suspense was very hard for Lois Howe to bear.
When Mrs. Dale drove her from the sick-room for air and exercise, she
wandered restlessly about the rectory, or went to Mr. Denner's door
to beg a word of encouragement from Mary, or take a momentary comfort
from the messages he sent her that he was better, and he begged she
would not allow herself the slightest discomfort; it was really of no
consequence,--no consequence at all.
Gifford was almost always with the little gentleman, and scarcely left
him, even to walk through the garden to the grassy street with Lois. On
Sunday, however, late in the afternoon, he went home with her; for Mr.
Dale, with whom she had come, was going to sit awhile with Mr. Denner,
and Gifford felt he could be spared.
The hour was full of that peculiar Sunday afternoon quiet which seems to
subdue even the crickets and the birds. There was a breath of fragrance
from some fresh-cut grass, still wet from a noon thunder shower, which
had left the air crystal-clear and fresh. Their shadows stretched far
ahead along the road, where the dust was still damp, though the setting
sun poured a flood of yellow light behind them. Lois walked as though
very tired; she scarcely noticed her companion, and did not speak except
to answer his questions.
"Isn't there any change in Mrs. Forsythe?" he asked, with anxious
sympathy.
Lois shook her head. "No," she said.
"Hasn't the rector gotten word to her son yet?"
"No," Lois said again. "We telegraphed twice, but he seems to be out of
town, and nobody knows his address."
Gifford made no comment.
"I wish he would come!" the girl cried passionately. "It would be a
relief to have him reproach me."
"I hope there will be no need of reproaches. I do hope his mother will
get well."
"Oh, no, no," Lois said, "she won't! I know it."
"Try to be more hopeful," he urged. "The doctor said there was absolutely
no injury except the shock. I believe she will get well, Lois."
"Oh, you don't know her," Lois answered. "You don't know how frail she
is. And then there's Mr. Denner! It is the responsibility of it that
kills me, Giff! I cannot get away from it for one single minute."
They had walked along the road where the accident had taken place, and
Lois shivered as she saw the trampled grass, though it had been her wish
that they should come this way.
"Oh," she said, putting her hands over her eyes, "life can never look the
same to me, even if they get well!"
"No," Gifford said, "I understand that. But it may have a new sweetness
of gratitude, Lois."
When they came to the gap in the hedge which was the outlet for the
rectory path, Gifford held aside the twigs for her to enter.
"Let us sit down on the stone bench a little while," he said. "This is
where poor little Mr. Denner sat that afternoon. Oh," he added in a lower
tone, "just think from what a grief he may have saved us! I feel as
though I could never be able to show him my gratitude." Then he looked at
the transplanted bunch of violets, which was fresh and flourishing, and
was silent.
Lois sat down a little reluctantly. The memory of that June night, nearly
a year ago, flashed into her mind; she felt the color creep up to her
forehead. "Oh," she thought, "how contemptible I am to have any thought
but grief,--how shallow I am, how cruel!"
And to punish herself for this, she rushed into speaking of her
responsibility again.
Gifford noticed her nervousness. "She is afraid of me," he said to
himself. "She wouldn't be, if she cared."
"You see, Gifford," she began, "I keep saying to myself every moment,
'I did it--it was my carelessness--all, all my fault.' Father tried to
comfort me, and so did Mrs. Forsythe as soon as she could speak, and Mr.
Denner has sent word that I must not give him a thought (dear Mr.
Denner!), but oh, I know!"
Gifford looked at her pale face, with the sweet trembling lip. "It is
awfully hard for you," he said.
"Every one said I was not to blame," she went on unsteadily, "that it
was not my fault; but, Gifford, if they die, I shall have been their
murderer!"
She pressed her hands tight together to keep her self-control.
"No, Lois," he answered gently, "it is not right to feel that; your will
would be to die now for either of them" ("Oh, yes, yes!" she said), "so
don't blame yourself any more than you must."
"Than I must?" she repeated slowly, looking at him with questioning eyes.
"How do you mean? They say there is no blame, Gifford."
He did not answer; his face was full of a grieved reluctance.
"Why," she said, with a quick breath, "do you blame me?"
Gifford put his strong, steady hand impulsively over hers. "I only know
how you must blame yourself," he said pitifully. "I wish I could bear the
pain of it for you."
"Then you say it is my fault?" she asked slowly.
"Yes, Lois," he answered, looking down at her with anxious tenderness.
"I wish I didn't have to say it, but if it is true, if you were careless,
it's best to meet it. I--I wish you would let me help you bear it."
Lois sat up very straight, as though bracing herself against a blow. "You
are right. I knew it was all my fault; I said so. But there's no help.
Let us go home now, please."
Gifford rose silently, and they went together between the sweet-smelling
borders, up to the rectory. "I wish I could help you," he said wistfully,
as she turned to say good-night at the foot of the steps.
"You cannot," she answered briefly. "No one can; and there's nothing I
can do to make up for it. I cannot even die as an atonement. Oh, if I
could only die!"
Gifford walked back, distressed and shocked; he was not old enough yet to
know that the desire of death is part of youth, and it seemed as though
he too had incurred a great responsibility. "What a brute I was to say
it!" he said to himself. "I feel as though I had struck a woman. And it
made her wish she was dead,--good heavens! How cruel I was! Yet if it was
true, it must have been right to tell her; I suppose it was my brutal
way!"
Lois went at once to Mrs. Forsythe's bedside, eager to hear of some
improvement, but the invalid only shook her head wearily.
"No, no better," she said; "still breathing, that's all. But you must not
grieve; it only distresses me."
Lois knelt down, and softly kissed her hand.
"My only trouble," Mrs. Forsythe continued, "is about my boy. Who will
take care of him when I am gone?"
She said much more than this, and perhaps even Gifford's persistent
justice could not have sustained the conviction that he had done right to
tell Lois that the blame of the accident rested upon her, if he had known
the thoughts of a possible atonement which passed through her mind when
Mrs. Forsythe spoke thus of her son. It was not the first time since her
injury that she had told Lois of her anxiety for Dick's future, and now
the girl left her with a dazed and aching heart.
Mrs. Dale, full of importance and authority, met her in the hall.
"I've got some beef-tea for Arabella Forsythe," she said, balancing the
tray she carried on one hand, and lifting the white napkin with the other
to see that it was all right, "if I can only persuade her to take it. I
never saw anybody who needed so much coaxing. But there! I must not be
hard on her; she is pretty sick, I must say,--and how she does enjoy it!
I said she would. But really, Lois, if we don't have some word from that
young man soon, I don't know what we shall do, for she is certainly worse
to-night. Your father has just had a letter from somebody, saying that he
went away with some friends on a pleasure trip, and didn't leave his
address. I thought he was so anxious to get to Ashurst,--well, that
is Arabella's story. I shouldn't wonder if he didn't see his mother
alive,--that's all I've got to say!"
She nodded her sleek head, and disappeared into the sick-room. Lois had a
sudden contraction of the heart that made her lips white. "If aunt Deely
says Mrs. Forsythe is worse, it is surely very bad."
She stumbled blindly up-stairs; she wanted to get away from everybody,
and look this horrible fact in the face. She found her way to the garret,
whose low, wide window, full of little panes of heavy greenish glass,
looked over the tree-tops towards the western sky, still faintly yellow
with sunset light, and barred by long films of gray cloud. She knelt down
and laid her cheek against the sill, which was notched and whittled by
childish hands; for this had been a play-room once, and many a rainy
afternoon she and Helen and Gifford had spent here, masquerading in the
queer dresses and bonnets packed away in the green chests ranged against
the wall, or swinging madly in the little swing which hung from the bare
rafters, until the bunches of southernwood and sweet-marjoram and the
festoons of dried apples shook on their nails. She looked at the stars
and hearts carved on the sill, and a big "Gifford" hacked into the wood,
and she followed the letters absently with her finger.
"He blames me," she said to herself; "he sees the truth of it. How shall
I make up for it? What can I do?"
She stayed by the window until the clouds turned black in the west; down
in the heavy darkness of the garden the crickets began their monotonous
z-z-ing, and in the locust-trees the katydids answered each other with a
sharp, shrill cry. Then she crept down-stairs and sat outside of Mrs.
Forsythe's room, that she might hear the slightest sound, or note the
flicker of the night-lamp burning dimly on the stand at the bedside.
Gifford, sitting in another sick-room, was suffering with her, and
blaming himself, in spite of principle.
Mr. Denner lay in his big bed in the middle of the library. The blinds
were drawn up to the tops of the long, narrow windows, that the last
gleam of light might enter, but the room was full of shadows, save where
a taper flickered on a small table which held the medicines.
"I think," said Mr. Denner, folding his little hands upon his breast,--"I
think, Gifford, that the doctor was not quite frank with me, to-day. I
thought it proper to ask him if my injury was at all of a serious nature,
if it might have--ah--I ought to apologize for speaking of unpleasant
things--if it might have an untoward ending. He merely remarked that all
injuries had possibilities of seriousness in them; he appeared in haste,
and anxious to get away, so I did not detain him, thinking he might have
an important case elsewhere. But it seemed as though he was not quite
frank, Gifford; as though, in fact, he evaded. I did not press it,
fearing to embarrass him, but I think he evaded."
Gifford also evaded. "He did not say anything which seemed evasive to me,
Mr. Denner. He was busy charging me to remember your medicines, and he
stopped to say a word about your bravery, too."
Mr. Denner shook his head deprecatingly at this, but he seemed pleased.
"Oh, not at all, it was nothing,--it was of no consequence." One of the
shutters blew softly to, and darkened the room; Gifford rose, and,
leaning from the window, fastened it back against the ivy which had
twisted about the hinge from the stained bricks of the wall. "I cannot
claim any bravery," the sick man went on. "No. It was, as it were,
accidental, Gifford."
"Accidental?" said the young man. "How could that be? I heard the horse,
and ran down the road after the phaeton just in time to see you make that
jump, and save her."
Mr. Denner sighed. "No," he replied, "no, it was quite by chance.
I--I was mistaken. I am glad I did not know, however, for I might have
hesitated. As it was, laboring under a misapprehension, I had no time to
be afraid."
"I don't think I quite understand," said Gifford.
Mr. Denner was silent. The room was so dark now, he could scarcely
see the young man's face as he stood leaning against one of the huge
bed-posts. Behind him, Mr. Denner just distinguished his big secretary,
with its pigeon-holes neatly labeled, and with papers filed in an orderly
way. No one had closed it since the afternoon that he had been carried in
and laid on the horse-hair sofa. He had given Mary the key then, and had
asked her to fetch the bottle of brandy from one of the long divisions
where it stood beside a big ledger. The little gentleman had hesitated to
give trouble in asking to have it locked again, though that it should be
open offended his ideas of privacy. Now he looked at it, and then let his
eyes rest upon the nephew of the Misses Woodhouse.
"Gifford," he said, "would you be so obliging as to take the small brass
key from my ring,"--here he thrust his lean hand under his pillow, and
produced his bunch of keys, which jingled as he held them unsteadily
out,--"and unlock the little lower drawer in the left-hand side of my
writing-desk?"
Gifford took the ring over to the candle, which made the shadow of his
head loom up on the opposite wall, as he bent to find the little brass
key among a dozen others of all shapes and sizes.
"I have unlocked it, sir," he said, a moment later.
"Take the candle, if you please," responded Mr. Denner, "and you will
see, I think, in the right-hand corner, back, under a small roll, a flat,
square parcel."
"Yes, sir," Gifford answered, holding the candle in his left hand, and
carefully lifting the parcel.
"Under that," proceeded Mr. Denner, "is an oval package. If you will be
good enough to hand me that, Gifford. Stay,--will you lock the drawer
first, if you please, and the desk?"
Gifford did so, and then put the package into Mr. Denner's hands. He held
it a moment before he gently removed the soft, worn tissue paper in which
it was wrapped; his very touch was a caress.
"I was desirous," he said, "of having this by me. It is a miniature of my
little sister, sir. She--perhaps you scarcely remember her? She died when
I was twenty. That is forty-one years ago. A long time, Gifford, a long
time to have missed her. She is the only thing of--of that nature that I
have loved--since I was twenty."
He stopped, and held the miniature up to look at it; but the light had
faded, and the ivory only gleamed faintly.
"I look at this every day when I am in health, and I like it by me now.
No, not the candle, I thank you, Gifford. I called for it now (how
tarnished these pearls are in the frame! If--if I should not recover, it
must be reset. Perhaps you will see to that for me, Gifford?),--I called
for it now, because I wished to say, in the event of my--demise, I should
wish this given to one of your aunts, sir."
Gifford came out from the shadow at the foot of the bed, and took Mr.
Denner's hand. He did not speak; he had only the man's way of showing
sympathy, and one weaker than Gifford could not have resisted the piteous
longing for life in Mr. Denner's tone, and would have hastened to
reassure him. But Gifford only held his hand in a firm, gentle grasp,
and was silent.
"I should wish one of them to have it," he continued. "I have not
provided for its welfare in my will; I had thought there was no one for
whom I had enough--enough regard, to intrust them with it. I even thought
to destroy it when I became old. Some people might wish to carry it with
them to the grave, but I could not--oh, no, not my little sister! See,
Gifford--take it to the light--not that little merry face. I should like
to think it was with your aunts. And--and there is, as it were, a certain
propriety in sending it to--her."
Gifford took the miniature from the lawyer's hand, and, kneeling by the
candle, looked at it. The faded velvet case held only the rosy, happy
face of a little child; not very pretty, perhaps, but with eyes which
had smiled into Mr. Denner's for forty years, and Gifford held it in
reverent hands.
"Yes," said the old man, "I would like one of them to have it."
"I shall remember it, sir," Gifford answered, putting the case down on
the lawyer's pillow.
The room was quite still for a few moments, and then Mr. Denner said,
"Gifford, it was quite accidental, quite by mistake, as it were, that I
stopped the horse for Mrs. Forsythe and little Lois. I--I thought, sir,
it was one of your aunts. One of your aunts, do you understand Gifford?
You know what I said to you, at the stone bench, that afternoon? I--I
alluded to myself, sir."
Gifford was silent, almost breathless; it all came back to him,--the
warm, still afternoon, the sunshine, the faintly rustling leaves of the
big silver poplar, and Mr. Denner's friend's love story. But only the
pathos and the tenderness of it showed themselves to him now. He put his
hand up to his eyes, a moment; somehow, he felt as though this was
something too sacred for him to see.
"I know, sir," he said; "I--I see."
"I trust," Mr. Denner continued, in a relieved voice, "there is no
impropriety in mentioning this to you, though you are still a youth. You
have seemed older these last few days, more--ah--sedate, if I may so
express it. They--they frequently speak as though you were quite a youth,
whereas it appears to me you should be considered the head of the
family,--yes, the head of the family. And therefore it seemed to me
fitting that I should mention this to you, because I wished to request
you to dispose of the miniature. It would have been scarcely proper to do
otherwise, scarcely honorable, sir."
"I am grateful to you for doing so," Gifford replied gently. "I beg you
will believe how entirely I appreciate the honor of your confidence."
"Oh, not at all," said Mr. Denner, waving his hand, "not at all,--pray do
not mention it. And you will give it to one of them," he added, peering
through the dusk at the young man, "if--if it should be necessary?"
"Yes, sir," he answered, "I will; but you did not mention which one, Mr.
Denner."
Mr. Denner was silent; he turned his head wearily toward the faint
glimmer which showed where the window was, and Gifford heard him sigh. "I
did not mention which,--no. I had not quite decided. Perhaps you can tell
me which you think would like it best?"
"I am sure your choice would seem of most value to them."
Mr. Denner did not speak; he was thinking how he had hoped that leap at
the runaway horse would have decided it all. And then his mind traveled
back to the stone bench, and his talk with Gifford, and the proverb.
"Gifford," he said firmly, "give it, if you please, to Miss Deborah."
They did not speak of it further. Gifford was already reproaching himself
for having let his patient talk too much, and Mr. Denner, his mind at
last at rest, was ready to fall asleep, the miniature clasped in his
feverish hand.
The next day, Gifford had no good news to carry to the rectory. The
lawyer had had a bad night, and was certainly weaker, and sometimes he
seemed a little confused when he spoke. Gifford shrank from telling Lois
this, and yet he longed to see her, but she did not appear.
She was with Mrs. Forsythe, her aunt said; and when he asked for the
invalid, Mrs. Dale shook her head. "I asked her how she felt this
morning, and she said, 'Still breathing!' But she certainly is pretty
sick, though she's one to make herself out at the point of death if she
scratches her finger. Still--I don't know. I call her a sick woman."
Mrs. Dale could not easily resign the sense of importance which attends
the care of a very sick person, even though Arabella Forsythe's appetite
had unquestionably improved.
"We've telegraphed again for her son," she went on, "though I must say
she does not seem to take his absence much to heart. They are the sort of
people, I think, that love each other better at a distance. Now, if I
were in her place, I'd be perfectly miserable without my children. I
don't know what to think of his not writing to her. It appears that he's
on a pleasure party of some kind, and he's not written her a line since
he started; so of course she does not know where he is."
But to Lois Mrs. Forsythe's illness was something beside interest and
occupation. The horror of her possible death hung over the young girl,
and seemed to sap her youth and vigor. Her face was drawn and haggard,
and her pleasant gray eyes had lost their smile. Somehow Mr. Denner's
danger, which to some extent she realized, did not impress her so deeply;
perhaps because that was, in a manner, the result of his own will, and
perhaps, too, because no one quite knew how much the little gentleman
suffered and how near death he was.
Lois had heard Gifford's voice as she went into the sick-room, and his
words of blame rung again in her ears. They emphasized Mrs. Forsythe's
despair about her son's future. She spoke to Lois as though she knew
there was no possible chance of her recovery.
"You see, my dear," she said, in her soft, complaining voice, which
sometimes dropped to a whisper, "he has no aunts or uncles to look after
him when I am gone; no one to be good to him and help him to be good. Not
that he is wild or foolish, Lois, like some young men, but he's full of
spirit, and he needs a good home. Oh, what will he do without me. He has
no one to take care of him!"
Lois was too crushed by misery to feel even a gleam of humor, when the
thought flashed through her mind that she might offer to take his
mother's place; but she knew enough not to express it.
"Oh," Mrs. Forsythe continued, "if he were only married to some sweet
girl that I knew and loved how happy I should be, how content!"
"I--I wish he were," Lois said.
"My death will be so hard for him, and who will comfort him! I am sorry
I distress you by speaking so, but, my dear child, on your death-bed you
look facts in the face. I cannot help knowing his sorrow, and it makes me
so wretched. My boy,--my poor boy! If I could only feel easy about him!
If I thought, oh, if I could just think, you cared for him! I know I
ought not to speak of it, but--it is all I want to make me happy. I might
have had a little more of life, a few months, perhaps, if it had not been
for the accident. There, there, you mustn't be distressed; but if I could
know you cared for him, it would be worth dying for, Lois."
"I do care for him!" Lois sobbed. "We all do!"
Mrs. Forsythe shook her head. "You are the only one I want; if you told
me you would love him, I should be happy, so happy! Perhaps you don't
like to say it. But listen: I know all about last fall, and how you sent
the poor fellow away broken-hearted; but I couldn't stop loving you, for
all that, and I was so glad when he told me he was going to try again;
and that is what he is coming down to Ashurst for. Yes, he is coming to
ask you. You see, I know all his secrets; he tells me everything,--such
a good boy, he is. But I've told you, because I cannot die, oh, I cannot
die, unless I know how it will be for him. If you could say yes, Lois,
if you could!"
Her voice had faltered again, and the pallor of weariness which spread
grayly over her face frightened Lois. She shivered, and wrung her hands
sharply together.
"Oh," she said, "I would do anything in the world for you--but--but"--
"But this is all I want," interrupted the other eagerly. "Promise this,
and I am content to die. When he asks you--oh, my dear, my dear, promise
me to say yes!"
Lois had hidden her face in the pillow. "It was all my fault," she was
saying to herself; "it is the only atonement I can make."
"I will do anything you want me to," she said at last.
Mrs. Forsythe, laid her shaking hand on the girl's bowed head. "Oh, look
at me! You give me life when you say that. Will you promise to say yes,
Lois?"
She lifted her head, but she would not look into Mrs. Forsythe's eyes.
"Yes," she answered, twisting her fingers nervously together. "I promise
if--if he wants me."
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" Mrs. Forsythe said, and then, to Lois's horror,
she burst into tears. She tried to say it was joy, and Lois must not be
frightened, but the young girl fled for Mrs. Dale, and then ran up to the
garret, and locked the door.
She went over to the western window and threw herself upon the floor, her
face hidden in her arms.
"He made me do it," she said between her sobs; "he said it was my fault.
Well, I have made up for it now. I have atoned. I have promised."
She was too miserable even to take the satisfaction which belongs to
youth, of observing its own wretchedness. She sobbed and cried without
consciousness of tears. At last, for very weariness and exhaustion, she
fell asleep, and was wakened by hearing Mrs. Dale rap sharply at the
door.
"Come, Lois, come!" she cried. "What's the matter? Dick Forsythe is here.
Do have politeness enough to come down-stairs. I don't know but that his
mother is a shade better, but she has had a chance to die twice over, the
time he's been getting here!"