On the following Sunday, young Mrs. Ware sat alone in the preacher's pew
through the morning service, and everybody noted that the roses had
been taken from her bonnet. In the evening she was absent, and after
the doxology and benediction several people, under the pretence of
solicitude for her health, tried to pump her husband as to the reason.
He answered their inquiries civilly enough, but with brevity: she
had stayed at home because she did not feel like coming out--this and
nothing more.
The congregation dispersed under a gossip-laden cloud of consciousness
that there must be something queer about Sister Ware. There was a
tolerably general agreement, however, that the two sermons of the day
had been excellent. Not even Loren Pierce's railing commentary on the
pastor's introduction of an outlandish word like “epitome”--clearly
forbidden by the Discipline's injunction to plain language understood of
the people--availed to sap the satisfaction of the majority.
Theron himself comprehended that he had pleased the bulk of his
auditors; the knowledge left him curiously hot and cold. On the one
hand, there was joy in the apparent prospect that the congregation would
back him up in a stand against the trustees, if worst came to worst.
But, on the other hand, the bonnet episode entered his soul. It had
been a source of bitter humiliation to him to see his wife sitting there
beneath the pulpit, shorn by despotic order of the adornments natural
to her pretty head. But he had even greater pain in contemplating the
effect it had produced on Alice herself. She had said not a word on the
subject, but her every glance and gesture seemed to him eloquent of deep
feeling about it. He made sure that she blamed him for having defended
his own gas and sidewalk rights with successful vigor, but permitted
the sacrifice of her poor little inoffensive roses without a protest. In
this view of the matter, indeed, he blamed himself. Was it too late to
make the error good? He ventured a hint on this Sunday evening, when he
returned to the parsonage and found her reading an old weekly newspaper
by the light of the kitchen lamp, to the effect that he fancied there
would be no great danger in putting those roses back into her bonnet.
Without lifting her eyes from the paper, she answered that she had
no earthly desire to wear roses in her bonnet, and went on with her
reading.
At breakfast the next morning Theron found himself in command of an
unusual fund of humorous good spirits, and was at pains to make the
most of it, passing whimsical comments on subjects which the opening
day suggested, recalling quaint and comical memories of the past, and
striving his best to force Alice into a laugh. Formerly her merry temper
had always ignited at the merest spark of gayety. Now she gave his jokes
only a dutiful half-smile, and uttered scarcely a word in response to
his running fire of talk. When the meal was finished, she went silently
to work to clear away the dishes.
Theron turned over in his mind the project of offering to help her, as
he had done so often in those dear old days when they laughingly began
life together. Something decided this project in the negative for him,
and after lingering moments he put on his hat and went out for a walk.
Not even the most doleful and trying hour of his bitter experience in
Tyre had depressed him like this. Looking back upon these past troubles,
he persuaded himself that he had borne them all with a light and
cheerful heart, simply because Alice had been one with him in every
thought and emotion. How perfect, how ideally complete, their sympathy
had always been! With what absolute unity of mind and soul they had
trod that difficult path together! And now--henceforth--was it to be
different? The mere suggestion of such a thing chilled his veins. He
said aloud to himself as he walked that life would be an intolerable
curse if Alice were to cease sharing it with him in every conceivable
phase.
He had made his way out of town, and tramped along the country hill-road
for a considerable distance, before a merciful light began to lessen the
shadows in the picture of gloom with which his mind tortured itself.
All at once he stopped short, lifted his head, and looked about him. The
broad valley lay warm and tranquil in the May sunshine at his feet. In
the thicket up the side-hill above him a gray squirrel was chattering
shrilly, and the birds sang in a tireless choral confusion. Theron
smiled, and drew a long breath. The gay clamor of the woodland
songsters, the placid radiance of the landscape, were suddenly taken in
and made a part of his new mood. He listened, smiled once more, and then
started in a leisurely way back toward Octavius.
How could he have been so ridiculous as to fancy that Alice--his
Alice--had been changed into someone else? He marvelled now at his own
perverse folly. She was overworked--tired out--that was all. The task of
moving in, of setting the new household to rights, had been too much for
her. She must have a rest. They must get in a hired girl.
Once this decision about a servant fixed itself in the young minister's
mind, it drove out the last vestage of discomfort. He strode along now
in great content, revolving idly a dozen different plans for gilding and
beautifying this new life of leisure into which his sanguine thoughts
projected Alice. One of these particularly pleased him, and waxed in
definiteness as he turned it over and over. He would get another piano
for her, in place of that which had been sacrificed in Tyre. That
beneficient modern invention, the instalment plan, made this quite
feasible--so easy, in fact, that it almost seemed as if he should find
his wife playing on the new instrument when he got home. He would stop
in at the music store and see about it that very day.
Of course, now that these important resolutions had been taken, it would
be a good thing if he could do something to bring in some extra money.
This was by no means a new notion. He had mused over the possibility in
a formless way ever since that memorable discovery of indebtedness in
Tyre, and had long ago recognized the hopelessness of endeavor in every
channel save that of literature. Latterly his fancy had been stimulated
by reading an account of the profits which Canon Farrar had derived from
his “Life of Christ.” If such a book could command such a bewildering
multitude of readers, Theron felt there ought to be a chance for him.
So clear did constant rumination render this assumption that the young
pastor in time had come to regard this prospective book of his as a
substantial asset, which could be realized without trouble whenever he
got around to it.
He had not, it is true, gone to the length of seriously considering what
should be the subject of his book. That had not seemed to him to matter
much, so long as it was scriptural. Familiarity with the process of
extracting a fixed amount of spiritual and intellectual meat from any
casual text, week after week, had given him an idea that any one of
many subjects would do, when the time came for him to make a choice.
He realized now that the time for a selection had arrived, and almost
simultaneously found himself with a ready-made decision in his mind. The
book should be about Abraham!
Theron Ware was extremely interested in the mechanism of his own brain,
and followed its workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could be more
remarkable, he thought, than to thus discover that, on the instant of
his formulating a desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and
behold! there his mind, quite on its own initiative, had the answer
waiting for him! When he had gone a little further, and the powerful
range of possibilities in the son's revolt against the idolatry of his
father, the image-maker, in the exodus from the unholy city of Ur, and
in the influence of the new nomadic life upon the little deistic family
group, had begun to unfold itself before him, he felt that the hand of
Providence was plainly discernible in the matter. The book was to be
blessed from its very inception.
Walking homeward briskly now, with his eyes on the sidewalk and his mind
all aglow with crowding suggestions for the new work, and impatience to
be at it, he came abruptly upon a group of men and boys who occupied the
whole path, and were moving forward so noiselessly that he had not heard
them coming. He almost ran into the leader of this little procession,
and began a stammering apology, the final words of which were left
unspoken, so solemnly heedless of him and his talk were all the faces he
saw.
In the centre of the group were four working-men, bearing between them
an extemporized litter of two poles and a blanket hastily secured across
them with spikes. Most of what this litter held was covered by another
blanket, rounded in coarse folds over a shapeless bulk. From beneath
its farther end protruded a big broom-like black beard, thrown upward at
such an angle as to hide everything beyond to those in front. The tall
young minister, stepping aside and standing tip-toe, could see sloping
downward behind this hedge of beard a pinched and chalk-like face, with
wide-open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull lilac hue, were moving
ceaselessly, and made a dry, clicking sound.
Theron instinctively joined himself to those who followed the litter--a
motley dozen of street idlers, chiefly boys. One of these in whispers
explained to him that the man was one of Jerry Madden's workmen in the
wagon-shops, who had been deployed to trim an elm-tree in front of his
employer's house, and, being unused to such work, had fallen from the
top and broken all his bones. They would have cared for him at Madden's
house, but he had insisted upon being taken home. His name was MacEvoy,
and he was Joey MacEvoy's father, and likewise Jim's and Hughey's and
Martin's. After a pause the lad, a bright-eyed, freckled, barefooted wee
Irishman, volunteered the further information that his big brother had
run to bring “Father Forbess,” on the chance that he might be in time to
administer “extry munction.”
The way of the silent little procession led through back streets--where
women hanging up clothes in the yards hurried to the gates, their aprons
full of clothes-pins, to stare open-mouthed at the passers-by--and came
to a halt at last in an irregular and muddy lane, before one of a half
dozen shanties reared among the ash-heaps and debris of the town's most
bedraggled outskirts.
A stout, middle-aged, red-armed woman, already warned by some messenger
of calamity, stood waiting on the roadside bank. There were whimpering
children clinging to her skirts, and a surrounding cluster of women of
the neighborhood, some of the more elderly of whom, shrivelled little
crones in tidy caps, and with their aprons to their eyes, were beginning
in a low-murmured minor the wail which presently should rise into the
keen of death. Mrs. MacEvoy herself made no moan, and her broad ruddy
face was stern in expression rather than sorrowful. When the litter
stopped beside her, she laid a hand for an instant on her husband's wet
brow, and looked--one could have sworn impassively--into his staring
eyes. Then, still without a word, she waved the bearers toward the door,
and led the way herself.
Theron, somewhat wonderingly, found himself, a minute later, inside a
dark and ill-smelling room, the air of which was humid with the steam
from a boiler of clothes on the stove, and not in other ways improved by
the presence of a jostling score of women, all straining their gaze upon
the open door of the only other apartment--the bed-chamber. Through
this they could see the workmen laying MacEvoy on the bed, and standing
awkwardly about thereafter, getting in the way of the wife and old
Maggie Quirk as they strove to remove the garments from his crushed
limbs. As the neighbors watched what could be seen of these proceedings,
they whispered among themselves eulogies of the injured man's industry
and good temper, his habit of bringing his money home to his wife, and
the way he kept his Father Mathew pledge and attended to his religious
duties. They admitted freely that, by the light of his example, their
own husbands and sons left much to be desired, and from this wandered
easily off into domestic digressions of their own. But all the while
their eyes were bent upon the bedroom door; and Theron made out, after
he had grown accustomed to the gloom and the smell, that many of them
were telling their beads even while they kept the muttered conversation
alive. None of them paid any attention to him, or seemed to regard his
presence there as unusual.
Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street doorway a person of
a different class. The bright light shone for a passing instant upon a
fashionable, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably brilliant shade of
red hair beneath it. In another moment there had edged along through the
throng, to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman, the owner of
this hat and wonderful hair. She was clad in light and pleasing spring
attire, and carried a parasol with a long oxidized silver handle of a
quaint pattern. She looked at him, and he saw that her face was of a
lengthened oval, with a luminous rose-tinted skin, full red lips, and
big brown, frank eyes with heavy auburn lashes. She made a grave little
inclination of her head toward him, and he bowed in response. Since her
arrival, he noted, the chattering of the others had entirely ceased.
“I followed the others in, in the hope that I might be of some
assistance,” he ventured to explain to her in a low murmur, feeling that
at last here was some one to whom an explanation of his presence in this
Romish house was due. “I hope they won't feel that I have intruded.”
She nodded her head as if she quite understood. “They'll take the will
for the deed,” she whispered back. “Father Forbes will be here in a
minute. Do you know is it too late?”
Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was darkened by the commanding bulk
of a newcomer's figure. The flash of a silk hat, and the deferential way
in which the assembled neighbors fell back to clear a passage, made his
identity clear. Theron felt his blood tingle in an unaccustomed way
as this priest of a strange church advanced across the room--a
broad-shouldered, portly man of more than middle height, with a shapely,
strong-lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm, commanding tread.
He carried in his hands, besides his hat, a small leather-bound case. To
this and to him the women courtesied and bowed their heads as he passed.
“Come with me,” whispered the tall girl with the parasol to Theron; and
he found himself pushing along in her wake until they intercepted the
priest just outside the bedroom door. She touched Father Forbes on the
arm.
“Just to tell you that I am here,” she said. The priest nodded with
a grave face, and passed into the other room. In a minute or two the
workmen, Mrs. MacEvoy, and her helper came out, and the door was shut
behind them.
“He is making his confession,” explained the young lady. “Stay here for
a minute.”
She moved over to where the woman of the house stood, glum-faced and
tearless, and whispered something to her. A confused movement among the
crowd followed, and out of it presently resulted a small table, covered
with a white cloth, and bearing on it two unlighted candles, a basin of
water, and a spoon, which was brought forward and placed in readiness
before the closed door. Some of those nearest this cleared space were
kneeling now, and murmuring a low buzz of prayer to the click of beads
on their rosaries.
The door opened, and Theron saw the priest standing in the doorway with
an uplifted hand. He wore now a surplice, with a purple band over his
shoulders, and on his pale face there shone a tranquil and tender light.
One of the workmen fetched from the stove a brand, lighted the two
candles, and bore the table with its contents into the bedroom. The
young woman plucked Theron's sleeve, and he dumbly followed her into
the chamber of death, making one of the group of a dozen, headed by Mrs.
MacEvoy and her children, which filled the little room, and overflowed
now outward to the street door. He found himself bowing with the others
to receive the sprinkled holy water from the priest's white fingers;
kneeling with the others for the prayers; following in impressed silence
with the others the strange ceremonial by which the priest traced
crosses of holy oil with his thumb upon the eyes, ears, nostrils, lips,
hands, and feet of the dying man, wiping off the oil with a piece
of cotton-batting each time after he had repeated the invocation to
forgiveness for that particular sense. But most of all he was moved by
the rich, novel sound of the Latin as the priest rolled it forth in the
ASPERGES ME, DOMINE, and MISEREATUR VESTRI OMNIPOTENS DEUS, with its
soft Continental vowels and liquid R's. It seemed to him that he had
never really heard Latin before. Then the astonishing young woman with
the red hair declaimed the CONFITEOR, vigorously and with a resonant
distinctness of enunciation. It was a different Latin, harsher and more
sonorous; and while it still dominated the murmured undertone of the
other's prayers, the last moment came.
Theron had stood face to face with death at many other bedsides; no
other final scene had stirred him like this. It must have been
the girl's Latin chant, with its clanging reiteration of the great
names--BEATUM MICHAELEM ARCHANGELUM, BEATUM JOANNEM BAPTISTAM, SANCTOS
APOSTOLOS PETRUM ET PAULUM--invoked with such proud confidence in this
squalid little shanty, which so strangely affected him.
He came out with the others at last--the candles and the folded hands
over the crucifix left behind--and walked as one in a dream. Even by
the time that he had gained the outer doorway, and stood blinking at
the bright light and filling his lungs with honest air once more, it had
begun to seem incredible to him that he had seen and done all this.