The news of the anxiety in Ashurst hurried Helen's visit. She might be of
use, she thought, and she had better go now than a week later.
Perhaps, too, she felt the necessity of calm. She had been forced into a
tumult of discussion and argument, which at last she had begun to meet
with the silence of exhaustion. Elder Dean had come to see her, and she
had received him at first with patience, and given him her reasons for
not believing in hell. There had even been a moment when Helen fancied
that she might convince him of what was so clear and simple to her own
mind. But to each argument of hers he had but one reply,--"The Bible,
ma'am, the Word of God, instructs us" thus or thus,--and he returned
again and again with unwearied obstinacy to his own position. After a
while Helen's annoyance at the man got the better of her judgment, and
she wrote to him, saying she did not wish to argue with him again, and
must beg him not to come to the parsonage to see her.
Mr. Grier, too, horrified at his wife's reports of what Mrs. Ward had
said, hastened to Lockhaven to reproach and admonish John for permitting
such heresy in his household; for Mr. Grier held with St. Paul that the
husband was head of the wife, even to the extent of regulating her
conscience. John was not at home, so he turned his attack upon the real
offender, assuring her that it was for her soul's sake that he thus dealt
with her. Helen had brought the interview to a sudden close by refusing
to hear further argument, and bowing Mr. Grier from the room, with a
certain steady look from under her level brows and a compression of the
lips which, greatly to his surprise when he thought it over, silenced
him.
The talks with John could not, of course, be called painful, for they
were with him, but they were futile.
When the last evening came before she was to leave home, Helen knew, with
a dull pain of helpless remorse, that it was a relief to go; she was glad
that she could not hear Elder Dean's voice for a fortnight, or even know,
she said with a pathetic little laugh to her husband, that she "was
destroying anybody's hope of hell, in the parish."
"Yes," John answered, "it will be good for you to be away from it all for
a time. It is hard to think clearly, hurried by my impatient anxiety to
have you reach a certain conclusion. I realize that. But I know you will
try to reach it, dearest."
Helen shook her head wearily. "No, I am afraid I cannot promise that. You
must not hope that I shall ever come to believe in eternal damnation. Of
course I believe that the consequences of sin are eternal; the effect
upon character must be eternal, and I should think that would be hell
enough, sometimes. But I shall never, never believe in it as you do."
"Oh, Helen," her husband said, "I cannot cease to hope while I have power
to pray."
Helen sighed. "I wish you could understand how useless it is, dearest, or
how it hurts me, this talk of hell. For people to be good for fear of
hell is like saying 'Honesty is the best policy;' it is degrading. And
it seems selfish to me, somehow, to think so much about one's own
salvation,--it is small, John. The scheme of salvation that the elders
talk so much about really resolves itself into a fear of hell and hope of
heaven, all for the individual soul, and isn't that selfish? But after
all, this question of eternal punishment is such a little thing, so on
the outside of the great puzzle. One goes in, and in: Why is sin, which
is its own punishment, in the world at all? What does it all mean,
anyhow? Where is God, and why does He let us suffer here, with no
certainty of a life hereafter? Why does He make love and death in the
same world? Oh, that is so cruel,--love and death together! Is He, at
all? Those are the things, it seems to me, one has to think about. But
why do I go all over it? We can't get away from it, can we?"
"Those questions are the outgrowth of unbelief in justice," he said
eagerly; "if you only realized justice and mercy, the rest would be
clear."
She came over to him, and, kneeling down, put her head on his knee. "Oh,
John, how can I leave you to-morrow?"
It was true that they could not drop the subject. Hour after hour they
had sat thus, John instructing, proving, reasoning, with always the
tenderest love and patience in his voice. Helen listening with a sweet
graciousness, which kept her firm negations from making her husband
hopeless. He had showed her, that Sunday evening after the sermon on
foreign missions, what he felt had been his awful sin: he had deprived
his people of the bread of life for her sake, and, for fear of jarring
the perfect peace of their lives and giving her a moment's unhappiness,
he had shrunk from his duty to her soul.
At first Helen had been incredulous. She could not realize that her mere
unbelief in any doctrine, especially such a doctrine as this of eternal
punishment, could be a matter of serious importance to her husband. It
needed an effort to treat his argument with respect. "What does it
matter?" she kept saying. "We love each other, so never mind what we
believe. Believe anything you want, darling. I don't care! Only love me,
John. And if my ideas offend your people, let us leave Lockhaven; or I
can keep silence, unless I should have to speak for what seems to me
truth's sake."
And then John tried to show her how he had wronged his people and been
false to his own vows and that he dared not leave them until he had
rooted out the evil his own neglect had allowed to grow up among them,
and that her mere silence would not reach the root of the evil in her own
soul. And the importance of it!
"Oh," he cried, once, when they had been talking until late into the
night, "is not your soul's life of importance, Helen? When I see you
going down to eternal death because I have failed in my duty to you, can
I satisfy myself by saying, We love one another? Because I love you, I
cannot be silent. Oh, I have wronged you, I have not loved you enough!
I have been content with the present happiness of my love,--my happiness!
I had no thought of yours."
So they had gone over and over the subject, until to Helen it seemed
threadbare, and they sat now in the dusky library, with long stretches of
silence between their words.
Alfaretta brought in the lamps. In view of Mrs. Ward's departure for
a fortnight, her father, still with an eye to wages, deferred giving
notice. "Besides," he thought, "Mrs. Ward may be convicted and converted
after she's been dealt with."
Helen had risen, and was writing some instructions for her maid: just
what was to be cooked for the preacher, and what precautions taken for
his comfort. As she put her pen down, she turned to look at her husband.
He was sitting, leaning forward, with his head bowed upon his hand, and
his eyes covered.
"Helen," he said, in a low, repressed voice, "once more, just once more,
let me entreat you; and then we will not speak of this before you go."
She sighed. "Yes, dearest, say anything you want."
There was a moment's silence, and then John rose, and stood looking down
at her. "I have such a horror of your going away. I do not understand it;
it is more than the grief and loneliness of being without you for a few
days. It is vague and indefinable, but it is terribly real. Perhaps it is
the feeling that atonement for my sin towards you is being placed out of
my reach. You will be where I cannot help you, or show you the truth. Yet
you will try to find it! I know you will. But now, just this last night,
I must once more implore you to open your heart to God's Spirit. Ah, my
Helen, I have sinned against Heaven and before you, but my punishment
will be greater than I can bear if I enter heaven without you! Heaven? My
God, it would be hell! The knowledge that my sin had kept you out--yet
even as I speak I sin."
He was walking up and down the room, his hands knotted in front of him,
and his face filled with hopeless despair.
"Yes, I sin even in this, for my grief is not that I have sinned against
God in my duty to his people and in forgetting Him, but that I may lose
you heaven, I may make you suffer!"
Helen came to him, and tried to put her arms about him. "Oh, my dear,"
she said, "don't you understand? I have heaven now, in your love. And for
the rest,--oh, John, be content to leave it in Hands not limited by our
poor ideas of justice. If there is a God, and He is good, He will not
send me away from you in eternity; if He is wicked and cruel, as this
theology makes Him, we do not want his heaven! We will go out into outer
darkness together."
John shuddered. "Lay not this sin to her charge," she heard him say; "she
knows not what she says. Yet I--Oh, Helen, that same thought has come to
me. You seemed to make my heaven,--you; and I was tempted to choose you
and darkness, rather than my God. Sin, sin, sin,--I cannot get away from
it. Yet if I could only save you! But there again I distrust my motive:
not for God's glory, but for my own love's sake, I would save you. My
God, my God, be merciful to me a sinner!"
In his excitement, he had pushed her arm from his shoulder, and stood in
tense and trembling silence, looking up, as though listening for an
answer to his prayer.
Helen dared not speak. There is a great gulf fixed between the nearest
and dearest souls when in any spiritual anguish; even love cannot pass
it, and no human tenderness can fathom it. Helen could not enter into
this holiest of holies, where her husband's soul was prostrate before its
Maker. In the solitude of grief and remorse he was alone.
It was this isolation from him which broke her calm. It seemed profane
even to look upon his suffering. She shrank away from him, and hid her
face in her hands. That roused him, and in a moment the old tenderness
enveloped her.
He comforted her with silent love, until she ceased to tremble, and
looked again into his tender eyes.
"What I wanted to say," he said, after a while, when she was leaning
quietly against his breast, "was just to tell you once more the reasons
for believing in this doctrine which so distresses you, dearest. To say,
in a word, if I could, why I lay such stress upon it, instead of some of
the other doctrines of the church. It is because I do believe that
salvation, eternal life, Helen, depends upon holding the doctrine of
reprobation in its truth and entirety. For see, beloved: deny the
eternity of punishment, and the scheme of salvation is futile. Christ
need not have died, a man need not repent, and the whole motive of the
gospel is false; revelation is denied, and we are without God and without
hope. Grant the eternity of punishment, and the beauty and order of the
moral universe burst upon us: man is a sinner, and deserves death, and
justice is satisfied; for, though mercy is offered, it is because Christ
has died. And his atonement is not cheapened by being forced upon men who
do not want it. They must accept it, or be punished."
Helen looked up into his face with a sad wonder. "Don't you see, dear,"
she said, "we cannot reason about it? You take all this from the Bible,
because you believe it is inspired. I do not believe it is. So how can we
argue? If I granted your premises, all that you say would be perfectly
logical. But I do not, John. I cannot. I am so grieved for you, dearest,
because I know how this distresses you; but I must say it. Silence can
never take the place of truth, between us."
"Oh, it did, too long, too long!" John groaned. "Is there no hope?" and
then he began his restless walk again, Helen watching him with yearning
eyes.
"I cannot give it up," he said at last. "There must be some way by which
the truth can be made clear to you. Perhaps the Lord will show it to me.
There is no pain too great for me to bear, to find it out; no, even the
anguish of remorse, if it brings you to God! Oh, you shall be saved! Do
the promises of the Eternal fail?"
He came over to her, and took her hands in his. Their eyes met. This
sacrament of souls was too solemn for words or kisses. When they spoke
again it was of commonplace things.
It was hard for her to leave the little low-browed house, the next
morning. John stopped to gather a bunch of prairie roses from the bush
which they had trained beneath the study window, and Helen fastened them
in her dress; then, just as they were ready to start, the preacher's wife
ran back to the study, and hurriedly put one of the roses from her bosom
into a vase on the writing-table, and stooped and gave a quick, furtive
kiss to the chair in which John always sat when at work on a sermon.
They neither of them spoke as they walked to the station, and no one
spoke to them. Helen knew there were shy looks from curtained windows and
peeping from behind doors, for she was a moral curiosity in Lockhaven;
but no one interrupted them. Just before she started, John took her hand,
and held it in a nervous grasp. "Helen," he said hoarsely, "for the sake
of my eternal happiness seek for truth, seek for truth!"
She only looked at him, with speechless love struggling through the pain
in her eyes.
The long, slow journey to Ashurst passed like a troubled dream. It was an
effort to adjust her mind to the different life to which she was going.
Late in the afternoon, the train drew up to the depot in Mercer, and
Helen tried to push aside her absorbing thought of John's suffering, that
she might greet her uncle naturally and gladly. The rector stood on the
platform, his stick in one hand and his glasses in the other, and his
ruddy face beaming with pleasure. When he saw her, he opened his arms and
hugged her; it would have seemed to Dr. Howe that he was wanting in
affection had he reserved his demonstrations until they were alone.
"Bless my soul," he cried, "it is good to see you again, my darling
child. We're all in such distress in Ashurst, you'll do us good. Your
husband couldn't come with you? Sorry for that; we want to see him
oftener. I suppose he was too busy with parish work,--that fire has kept
his hands full. What? There is the carriage,--Graham, here's Miss Helen
back again. Get in, my dear, get in. Now give your old uncle a kiss, and
then we can talk as much as we want."
Helen kissed him with all her heart; a tremulous sort of happiness stole
over the background of her troubled thoughts, as a gleam of light from a
stormy sunset may flutter upon the darkness of the clouds.
"Tell me--everything! How is Lois? How are the sick people? How is
Ashurst?"
Dr. Howe took up a great deal of room, sitting well forward upon the
seat, with his hands clasped on his big stick, which was planted between
his knees, and he had to turn his head to see Helen when he answered her.
"Mrs. Forsythe is better," he said; "she is certainly going to pull
through, though for the first week all that we heard was that she was
'still breathing.' But Denner is in a bad way; Denner is a very sick
man. Gifford has been with him almost all the time. I don't know what
we should have done without the boy. Lois is all right,--dreadfully
distressed, of course, about the accident; saying it is her fault,
and all that sort of thing. But she wasn't to blame; some fool left
a newspaper to blow along the road and frighten the horse. She needs
you to cheer her up."
"Poor little Mr. Denner!" Helen exclaimed. "I'm glad Giff is with him.
Has Mr. Forsythe come?"
"Yes," said the rector; "but they are queer people, those Forsythes. The
young man seems quite annoyed at having been summoned: he remarked to
your aunt that there was nothing the matter with his mother, and she must
be moved to her own house; there was nothing so bad for her as to have a
lot of old women fussing over her. I wish you could have seen Adele's
face! I don't think she admires him as much as she did. But his mother
was moved day before yesterday, and he has a trained nurse for her. Your
aunt Adele feels her occupation gone, and thinks Mrs. Forsythe will die
without her," the rector chuckled. "But she won't,--she'll get well."
Here he gave a heavy sigh, and said, "Poor Denner!"
"You don't mean Mr. Denner won't get well?" Helen asked anxiously.
"I'm afraid not," Dr. Howe answered sadly.
They were silent for a little while, and then Helen said in a hushed
voice, "Does he know it, uncle Archie?"
"No," said the rector explosively, "he--he doesn't!"
Dr. Howe was evidently disturbed; he pulled up one of the carriage
windows with some violence, and a few minutes afterwards lowered it with
equal force. "No, he doesn't," he repeated. "The doctor only told me this
morning that there was no hope. Says it is a question of days. He's very
quiet; does not seem to suffer; just lies there, and is polite to people.
He was dreadfully troubled at breaking up the whist party last Saturday;
sent apologies to the other three by Gifford." Dr. Howe tugged at his
gray mustache, and looked absently out of the window. "No, I don't
believe he has an idea that he--he won't get well." The rector had a
strange shrinking from the word "death."
"I suppose he ought to know," Helen said thoughtfully.
"That is what the doctor said," answered the rector; "told me he might
want to settle his affairs. But bless my soul, what affairs can Denner
have? He made his will fifteen years ago, and left all he had to Sarah
Denner's boy. I don't see what he has to do."
"But, uncle," Helen said, "mightn't he have some friends or relatives to
whom he would want to send a message,--or perhaps see? People you never
heard of?"
"Oh, no, no," responded Dr. Howe. "I've known William Denner, man and
boy, these sixty years. He hasn't any friends I don't know about; he
could not conceal anything, you know; he is as simple and straightforward
as a child. No; Willie Denner'll have his money,--there's not too much of
it,--and that's all there is to consider."
"But it is not only money," Helen went on slowly: "hasn't he a right to
know of eternity? Not just go out into it blindly?"
"Perhaps so,--perhaps so," the rector admitted, hiding his evident
emotion with a flourish of his big white silk handkerchief. "You see," he
continued, steadying his cane between his knees, while he took off his
glasses and began to polish them, "the doctor wants me to tell him,
Helen."
"I suppose so," she said sympathetically.
"And I suppose I must," the rector went on, "but it is the hardest task
he could set me. I--I don't know how to approach it."
"It must be very hard."
"Of course it seems natural to the doctor that I should be the one to
tell him. I'm his pastor, and he's a member of my church--Stay! is he?"
Dr. Howe thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled his forehead, as he
thought. "Yes, oh yes, I remember. We were confirmed at the same time,
when we were boys,--old Bishop White's last confirmation. But he hasn't
been at communion since my day."
"Why do you think that is, uncle Archie?" Helen asked.
"Why, my dear child, how do I know?" cried the rector. "Had his own
reasons, I suppose. I never asked him. And you see, Helen, that's what
makes it so hard to go and tell Denner that--that he's got to die.
Somehow, we never touched on the serious side of life. I think that's
apt to be the case with friends in our position. We have gone fishing
together since we were out of pinafores, and we have played whist,--at
least I've watched him,--and talked politics or church business over
our pipes; but never anything like this. We were simply the best of
friends. Ah, well, Denner will leave a great vacancy in my life."
They rode in silence for some time, and then Helen said gently, "Yes, but
uncle, dear, that is the only way you are going to help him now,--with
the old friendship. It is too late for anything else,--any religious aid,
I mean,--when a man comes to look death in the face. The getting ready
for death has gone, and it is death itself, then. And I should think it
would be only the friend's hand and the friend's eyes, just the human
sympathy, which would make it easier. I suppose all one can do is to say,
'Let my friendship go with you through it all,--all this unknown to us
both.'"
Dr. Howe turned and looked at her sharply; the twilight had fallen, and
the carriage was very dark. "That's a heathenish thing to say, Helen, and
it is not so. The consolations of religion belong to a man in death as
much as in life; they ought not to belong more to death than to life, but
they do, sometimes. It isn't that there is not much to say to Denner. It
is the--the unusualness of it, if I can so express it. We have never
touched on such things, I tell you, old friends as we are; and it is
awkward, you understand."
They were very quiet for the rest of the long drive. They stopped a
moment at Mr. Denner's gate; the house was dark, except for a dim light
in the library and another in the kitchen, where Mary sat poring over her
usual volume. Gifford came out to say there was no change, and opened the
carriage door to shake hands with Helen.
"He would have prayers to-night," he said to the rector, still talking in
a hushed voice, as though the spell of the sick-room were on him out
under the stars, in the shadows of the poplar-trees. "He made Willie read
them aloud to Mary, he told me; he said it was proper to observe such
forms in a family, no matter what the conditions might be. Imagine Willie
stumbling through Chronicles, and Mary fast asleep at her end of that big
dark dining-room!"
Gifford smiled, but the rector was too much distressed to be amused; he
shivered as they drove away.
"Ah," he said sharply, "how I hate that slam of a carriage door! Makes me
think of but one thing. Yes, I must see him to-morrow. I must tell him
to-morrow."
The rector settled back in his corner, his face darkening with a grieved
and troubled frown, and they did not speak until they reached the rectory
gate. As it swung heavily back against the group of white lilacs behind
it, shaking out their soft, penetrating fragrance into the night air,
some one sprang towards the carriage, and almost before it stopped stood
on the steps, and rapped with impatient joy at the window.
It was Lois. She had thrown a filmy white scarf about her head, and had
come out to walk up and down the driveway, and listen for the sound of
wheels. She had not wanted to stay in the house, lest Mr. Forsythe might
appear.
Lois had scarcely seen him since he arrived, though this was not because
of his devotion to his mother. He spent most of his time lounging about
the post-office, and swearing that Ashurst was the dullest, deadest place
on the face of the earth. He had not listened to Lois's self-reproaches,
and insisted that blame must not even be mentioned. He was quite in
earnest, but strangely awkward. Lois, weighed down by the consciousness
of her promise, felt it was her fault, yet dared not try to put him at
his ease, and fled, at the sound of his step, to her refuge in the
garret. She did not feel that her promise to Mrs. Forsythe meant that she
must give opportunity as well as consent. But Dick did not force his
presence upon her, and he was very uncomfortable and _distrait_ when at
the rectory.
She need not have feared his coming again that evening. He was in the
library of his mother's house, covering many pages of heavy crested
note-paper with his big, boyish writing. Strangely enough, however, for
a young gentleman in love with Miss Lois Howe, he was addressing in terms
of ardent admiration some one called "Lizzie."
But in the gladness of meeting Helen, Lois almost forgot him. Her arms
around her cousin's neck, and Helen's lips pressed against her wet cheek,
there was nothing left to wish for, except the recovery of the two sick
people.
"Oh, Helen! Helen! Helen!" she cried hysterically, while Dr. Howe,
flourishing his silk handkerchief, patted them both without
discrimination, and said, "There, my dear, there, there."