A SILVER CHALICE
WITH knees trembling and lips quivering, Katy hastened across the
Hartman lawn. She was still smarting too hotly from the shock of her
loss and the shame of discovery to realize how great a burden had been
lifted from her shoulders by the mere sharing of her secret. Poor Alvin
seemed meaner than he was, her association with him criminal, herself
imbecilic. She remembered his touch with loathing, his beseeching gaze
with disgust. She thought of his father, with his queer, glancing eyes,
his muttering, his praying. It was no wonder that David Hartman despised
them. She saw herself through David's scornful eyes; she remembered the
outrageous struggle at the Sheep Stable; she could have sunk through the
ground in her distress.
But David had been avenged. Against her new madness of affection Katy
was still struggling. By night she dreamed of David, by day she thought
of David. Her care of Cassie, her sweeping and cleaning of the great
house, had become labors of love.
"I do not think even any more of education," mourned Katy in her alarm.
"I am at last quite crazy."
She hurried now into the Hartman kitchen, alarmed because she had been
so long away. Cassie grew daily worse, a little less able to make the
journey from her bed to the settle in the kitchen, a little more
preoccupied, a little more silent. Katy's attentions troubled her, she
did not like to have a hand laid upon her shoulder or an arm thrown
round her. Once, when she had insisted upon going about the house, she
had fainted, and Katy had sent in terror for the doctor, and Cassie had
been put to bed in her little room. When she had recovered in a measure,
she told Katy where she would find in the drawers of one of the great
bureaus certain clothes for her laying away. It was not a cheerful
position which Katy held!
To-day Cassie had stayed in her bed, her cheek on her hand, her eyes
closed. Often she lay thus for hours. She did not seem to think, often
she did not seem to breathe. The atrophy of Cassie's mind and heart were
almost complete.
Katy, opening the door softly, so as not to rouse Cassie if she slept,
found the kitchen as she had left it, dark and silent and warm. She did
not stop to take off the scarlet shawl which she had worn when she went
to satisfy herself that her hoard was still in the putlock hole, but
climbed at once the steep, narrow stairway which led to the rooms above.
Her body ached for rest, but there was still bread to be set and the
fire to be fixed for the night. There awaited Katy, also, a more
difficult experience than these.
Upstairs, also, all was dark and quiet. Katy tiptoed across the hall to
look in upon the invalid. With hands resting on the sides of the door,
she peered in. She could see the outlines of the bureau and the narrow
bed; she thought that she heard the even, regular breathing of the
sleeper, and she was about to turn and go down the steps. Then a
startling suspicion halted her. The bedcovers seemed to hang straight
and even to the floor, the pillows to stand stiffly against the
headboard; there was, after all, it seemed suddenly to Katy, no sound of
breathing. For an instant she clung to the door frame, her back to the
room, then she turned slowly and compelled herself to take the few short
steps to the bed. There she felt about with her hands. The covers were
smooth; instead of the hand or cheek of Cassie Hartman, she touched the
starched ruffles of a fresh pillowcase.
"Cassie!" cried Katy in wild alarm.
There was no answer. Striving to make her voice sound louder, but only
succeeding in uttering a fainter whisper, Katy cried again.
"Cassie! Where are you?"
Still there was no answer.
Frantically Katy fumbled about for a match. The room was in order, a
smooth towel covered the bureau, the bed was freshly made as though for
a stranger. Katy stared stupidly about her until the match burned her
fingers and she was left in the darkness which seemed to close in upon
her and smother her. The great house with its tremendous length and
breadth, its many rooms, their blackness, the dark closets in the eaves
into which one could accidentally shut one's self and die--the great
house took shape about her, dim, mysterious, terrible. Strange forms
seemed to be here in the room crowding upon her. Though she was aware
that it threatened her, and though she tried desperately not to yield it
entrance to her consciousness, the horrible recollection of John
Hartman's face as he sat in his buggy on the mountain road, of the still
whiteness of the faces of her own dead, crept slowly upon her. Must she
go through this house searching for her mistress? She dared not go for
aid, when Cassie might be lying in some corner helpless or dying. Cassie
could scarcely get out of her bed alone. Where had she gone? Who had
made up this bed?
Then, in time to save her reason, Katy heard a faint voice addressing
her from a distant corner of the great house.
"Katy!"
Katy moved slowly along the dark hall.
"Ach, where are you?"
"Here," answered the faint voice.
Supporting herself against the wall, Katy crept along. At the end a door
opened into the house proper, that seldom visited temple to the gods of
order and cleanliness. The door now stood open.
"Are you sick?" gasped Katy. "Where are you? Did you fall?"
"No," came the slow answer. "I am here. You can make a light."
Falteringly Katy obeyed. On a bracket at the end of the hall hung a
lamp; this she lighted with a great clattering of globe against chimney.
Then, lifting the lamp, she carried it into the room from which the
voice proceeded. Her scarlet shawl was still about her, her hair was
disorderly from the squire's embrace, her eyes were wild and startled.
She was a strange contrast to the room in which she stood.
Here was the great high bed with its carved posts, each terminating in a
pineapple; here the interesting steps on which one mounted to the broad
plateau of repose; here the fine curtains and the rich carpet,--all as
Katy had left them after the last careful sweeping and dusting and
polishing. But the bed had been disturbed; in it lay the mistress of the
house, white and sick, but full of satisfaction over having accomplished
her pitiful purpose.
Katy's wild eyes questioned her.
"It was time for me to come," announced Cassie, solemnly.
"It was time for you to come!" repeated Katy. "What do you mean?"
"My time has come," explained Cassie. "You are to go for the preacher."
Katy clasped her hands across her breast. She remembered now the bureau
in which the white underclothes and the black dress were kept. She began
to cry.
"Oh, no! I will go for the doctor! You shouldn't have done this! You
have made yourself worse! I will get you the medicine the doctor gave
you, then I will run for him."
"You will go for the preacher," directed Cassie, wearily. "My time has
come."
Katy looked wildly about her, but found no help either in the thick
carpet or the heavy hangings. She was afraid to go, yet she did not dare
to stay. Cassie sank a little deeper into her pillows, the shadows under
her eyes seemed to darken, the covers moved with her throbbing heart.
"Go!" she commanded thickly.
Katy ran down the steps through the kitchen and out to the gate. The
preacher lived nearer than the doctor; a single knock and his window was
lifted.
"Cassie Hartman must see you!" cried Katy. "She is very low. Bring the
doctor and come quickly."
Without staying to hear whether there were any questions to be answered,
Katy flew back into the dark kitchen and up the narrow stairs. Cassie
lay with her eyes closed, her hands folded across her breast.
"The front door should be opened, and there should be a light," she
gasped.
"I cannot leave you!"
"Go!" said Cassie.
Again Katy flew to obey. David should be sent for; must she remind them
that David should be sent for? It seemed to Katy that any observer could
see her obsession in her face.
"You know where my things are, Katy," whispered Cassie.
"Yes, I know! But you are not going to die!"
"My time has come," said Mrs. Hartman. "Everything is attended to and
written out in the desk. You can tell the squire."
"I will," faltered Katy, standing between the tall pillars at the foot
of the bed. She remembered the squire's face as he came to tell her
grandmother that Grandfather Gaumer was dead; she thought of David and
David's face when he should be told. David would be alone in the world;
surely, though he had all its riches, he would care! Surely his mother
had a message for him. The preacher was a newcomer; he did not know
David; he should give him no message from his mother! And Dr. Benner
should give him no message from his mother. Katy clasped her hands a
little more closely and looked down upon Cassie.
"And David?"
Cassie's eyelids quivered, but she made no reply.
"Some one must send for David!"
When Cassie still made no answer, Katy came round the corner of the bed
and stood by the pillow.
"Suppose"--Katy stammered and faltered--"suppose--shall anything be said
to David if--if--"
"David will find everything ready," said Cassie, wearily. "He will find
everything in order."
Katy leaned over the pillow. Cassie could not know what it was to die,
to go away forever; Cassie could not know how one wept and mourned when
those whom one loved had died; could not know how one remembered every
word, cherished every caress. David had no one else, and David was
young; David could not be so hard of heart as he seemed or Cassie so
stony. There was hardly a person in Millerstown who would have ventured
to oppose Cassie, or to persuade her against her will. But all the
characteristics of Katy's youth had not vanished; still, seeing a goal,
she moved toward it, disregarding obstacles. It seemed to her that she
heard the gate swing open and shut, heard the sound of voices, of rapid
footsteps. The preacher and the doctor were coming, and probably other
Millerstonians would come with them. She took Cassie by the hand and was
terrified by its chill.
"Do you not leave your love for David?" she asked, crying.
Cassie looked up at her with no other expression than slight
astonishment, as though Katy's language were strange. Cassie loved
nothing that could turn and rend her. John had turned and had rent her,
but in David's case she had had a care for herself, from misery there
she had sternly and bravely defended herself. This bright-eyed Katy with
her light step and her pretty ways had disturbed her, had set her to
dreaming at night of a house filled with children, of growing boys and
girls who would have loved their mother and cherished her.
And here this same Katy hung above her, clung to her, would not, thought
poor Cassie, would not let her die as she had planned! She did not know
that hardness of heart was in her a more terrible hurt than any offense
which love could have brought. In her weakness she felt a sudden quiver
of life in that heart of stone; it seemed as though it melted to water.
But she would not yield. She tried to draw her hand away from the grasp
which held it; she closed her eyes; she remembered how she had defended
herself against grief. But she could not get her weak hand away, could
not shut out the sound of Katy's voice.
"What shall I tell David? Let me tell David something from his mother.
Why, David loves you! David will grieve for you! Oh, please!" She lifted
Mrs. Hartman's white hand and held it against her cheek, as though she
would compel a blessing. "Oh, please let me tell David something!"
But no word was spoken, no tears stole out from under the closed lids.
The lids quivered, opened and closed; beyond that slight motion there
was nothing. Already the preacher and the doctor were ascending the
steps. To both the serious condition of the invalid was evident. The
doctor told Katy in his dictatorial way that she should not have allowed
Mrs. Hartman to leave her bed. The doctor always spoke to Katy with
irritation, as though he could not quite escape the recollection of
promises made and forgotten.
Cassie lay quietly with her hands clasped once more on her breast. Her
eyes were open now; she spoke clearly in a weak voice, the self-control,
fostered through years, serving her still. She signified that she wished
her pastor to give her the communion, for which purpose he had brought
with him his silver flask and chalice and paten. These he spread out on
the little table at the head of Cassie's bed.
On the other side of the bed stood Katy, with wide, tearful eyes and
white cheeks. The scene was almost too solemn for endurance; the great
catafalque of a bed with its white valances and draperies, the dark
shadows in the corners of the room, the deep silence of the night, the
brightly illuminated, earnest faces of the doctor and the preacher. But
all seemed to make Katy's eyes more clear to see, her heart more keen to
remember. Her thoughts went back over all the solemn services she had
witnessed, the watch-night services of her childhood, the communion
services, the hour of her grandmother's passing. She remembered the
clear nights when she had run through the snow with Whiskey and had been
at once so unhappy and so happy. How foolish to be unhappy then when she
had everything! She remembered even that morning, long, long ago, when
John Hartman had frightened her. Surely, as her grandmother said, she
must have imagined that rage! She was nothing to John Hartman.
The minister had poured the wine from the flask into the chalice, and
had broken the bread. He lifted the chalice and the light flashed from
its bright surface.
"Drink ye all of it," he began gravely in his deep voice.
Then Katy heard no more. She put her arm tightly round the tall post of
the bed and clung and clung to it as though a great creature or a great
wave threatened to drag her from her feet. She looked far away across
the wide bed, through the walls of the great house, over the village and
the fields to the church on the hill. She was a child again in a red
dress, and she had run unsteadily out the brick walk from her
grandmother's kitchen door to the gate, out to the blessed, free,
forbidden open road. She had talked to herself happily; she had stopped
to pull leaves which still lingered on the Virginia creeper vines on the
fences.
Presently, when she had trotted past the first field, the open door of
the church had attracted her. She had been taken to church a few times;
she remembered the singing--even that early had the strange performance
of Henny Wenner fascinated her; she now turned her steps toward the
delightful place. In the church an interesting man was at work with a
little trowel and beautiful soft mortar, and she had watched him until
she had grown sleepy, whereupon, with that feeling of possession in all
the world which had been hers so keenly in her childhood, she had laid
herself down on the soft cushion of a pew.
When she woke the interesting little man with his trowel was no longer
in the church. Another man had taken his place before the hole in the
church wall, and spying her suddenly had driven her out with anger. She
had not thought of it for years; they had persuaded her that she had
dreamed it; had told her that if John Hartman had ever spoken to her
sharply, it was only to send her home where she belonged, that he could
have against her no unkindly feeling.
But now it came back, strangely illumined. John Hartman had driven her
away angrily, and John Hartman had held in his hand a silver cup, the
shape of the one which the preacher held to Cassie's pale lips, but
larger, handsomer. Upon it the sun had flashed as the lamplight flashed
now upon this smaller cup.
At first Katy only remembered vaguely that there had been trouble about
the communion service, that it had disappeared, that dishonest Alvin's
dishonest and crazy father had taken it. The thought of Alvin brought to
her mind a new set of sensations, confusing her.
"He held it in his hand," whispered Katy to herself. "Then he pushed it
into the hole, quickly. I saw him do it!"
She leaned her head against the tall bedpost, and did not hear the
command of the doctor to bring water.
"Katy!" said he, again, a little more loudly.
Still Katy did not stir. The preacher looked up also, and his communion
service now over, came quickly with an alarmed glance at Katy round the
great bed and took her by the arm. Her muscles were stiff; she had only
one conscious thought--to cling to the thing nearest to her. The
minister unclasped her hand and half carrying her, half leading her,
took her down to the kitchen and laid her upon the settle. When he had
taken the water to the doctor, he came back, to find Katy sitting up and
looking about her in a dazed fashion.
"You had better lie down," bade the preacher.
Katy shook her head. "I cannot lie down."
"This has been too much for you," went on the preacher kindly. "My wife
is coming now to stay. You cannot do anything more for poor Mrs.
Hartman. If I were you I would go home. When the rest come I will walk
down the street with you."
Katy looked at him with somber eyes and did not move.
"This house is no place for you, Katy."
Katy shivered; then she got to her feet. She remembered her aching
desire to console David, her vague plans; she saw again the shining,
silver chalice, the startled, terrified face of David's father as she
tugged at his coat.
"No," agreed Katy with a stiff tongue. "You have right. This house is no
place for me."